


i, rebel

by Flora_Obsidian



Series: found families [11]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Child Soldiers, Dehumanization, Gen, Rebellion, Stormtrooper Culture, Stormtrooper Rebellion, The First Order Is Terrible, but we all knew this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 13:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 30,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9073102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: History repeats, as history is want to do so, and it is the youth who rise up against that which stands before them. or: Finn's departure from the First Order has consequences far beyond anything he ever imagined.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, um. It's been four months? School has been sucking up all of my free time, but hey, I got in to college. That's one less thing to stress about, right?
> 
> Anyway, I have a decent amount of this written and planned, it's just that they bits I have written don't really fit together to form anything resembling a coherent narrative. Bear with me on updates, they might be fast, they might not. I will do my best to get things to you, since I like writing and I guess, since you keep coming back, that you like reading, no?
> 
> Warnings for each chapter will be posted in the beginning notes.

MK-2942 is remarkably intelligent, for a Cadet -- she knows this, because she has placed high above the rankings of the other Cadets in her unit, and she has done so with an ease that impresses the Officers. She is not a Trooper, not yet, and Troopers are not supposed to be intelligent -- she knows this, too -- but the ones that are, the ones that  _are_ can become like the Captain, the Captain who had once been PH-2762 and is now  _Phasma_.

The Officers say, when they do not think anyone is listening to them (and they are, in part, right, since Troopers are Troopers and not people, she knows this), that MK-2942 is intelligent, for a Cadet, an unofficially-titled _Junior Trooper_ , and that she has the makings of an Officer in her.

Cadets do not show pride. Troopers have the luxury of the helmets, but Cadets have no such shield -- they are not supposed to show emotion at all, though out of sight they allow the slightest bit of movement, of conversation, words murmured in low tones to one another. MK-2942 is decidedly proud that the Officers think she has the potential for rank, that maybe-- like Phasma, and a  _name_. She feels pride when she is told that she has passed the first three stages of training with the highest marks of everyone in her unit. She feels pride when she is walked before the ranks and shown as an example to those who have fallen behind.

They cannot bring glory to the First Order, cannot serve at their full potential, lacking as they are. She is what a good Cadet should be. She knows this.

Following the three primary stages of training, she waits for assignment to a specialized unit. All Cadets are taught the same way, but some are more suited to be the head of a unit, and some are better with numbers, and some are better at a specific form of combat than another -- the First Order needs all of its Troopers serving to their fullest potential so that the First Order can continue its quest to bring peace to the galaxy. Each Trooper's strengths are cultivated. Each Trooper's weaknesses are crushed. She thinks they will place her in some form of command training, and she is correct-- she feels pride when she is told by a gray-uniformed Officer that she will be responsible for overseeing the primary stage of training for a new unit of Cadets. She is what a Cadet should be, what all Cadets should inspire to be--

 _You will be an example to them_ , the Officer tells her, and it is a great effort to keep her expression carefully blank.

She is an example of what a Cadet should be. She will be a Trooper someday. She  _will_ be an Officer. The First Order keeps their promises, after all, and she is nothing without the First Order. The First Order takes care of its own.

MK-2942 takes a shuttle with other Cadets of a similar caliber, across the sprawling base facility that trains Cadets for their eventual service to the First Order; she is given a datapad with information, and a location, and strict reminders on what she should and should not do-- but she knows all of this. She has lived it. She has been entrusted with the instruction of a dozen Cadets, a single unit, and she will not fail the First Order.

The Cadets are all in primaries, the first stage of training. They come up to MK-2942's waist in height, and they stand at attention in front of perfectly-made bunks when she enters the quarters that they are to share. Six of them are Human; six are half-breeds or a more diluted mix. All twelve wear black, a First Order insignia on the sleeve and a smaller marking underneath that designates their status. MK-2942 looks at the twelve Cadets and pushes down the pride that rises up within her again and thinks,  _I will serve the First Order_ and  _I will train them to serve._

"State designations," she orders, receives a short chorus of answers in response. They are a subset of the PK unit, serials 4766 through 4777, and she commits their designations to memory, as she dos with all else. MK-2942 is intelligent, for a Cadet, and she will not allow cause for anyone to say otherwise.

"I am MK-2942," she states when the list of letters and numbers has stopped, the Cadets still standing at attention. "I will be overseeing the first stage of your training. You will follow my orders. You will speak when spoken to or when called upon to speak. Am I understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," the twelve say in unison. They click their heels and salute.

MK-2942 does not allow herself to smile, but her chest feels light as she pushes the smile down, away from her face. They will serve the First Order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, short. Don't worry, it gets happierish as it goes. As always, I hope you enjoyed, and comments and kudos are always appreciated!
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: vague vague ish dubcon, mentioned in a hypothetical sense and not involving any of the characters present in the chapter; mentions of abortion.

She is not sure what kind of test this is, but she knows that it is a test, and she thinks that it is one that she is expected to fail.

This cannot be allowed. She is a good Junior Trooper, and she will be a good Trooper, someday-- someday, she will be a good Officer, like PH-2762 who became Phasma. To be a Trooper, to be an Officer, she cannot fail the tasks she is assigned. 

It is not because the Cadets she is in charge of overseeing are inefficient, or because they cannot follow orders, or because they do not listen to what the First Order teaches. They are all of those things and more, but they are not  _Human_. PK-4771 is only a quarter Chiss, and it is enough to condemn her within the ranks, even before she has moved out of primaries. Humans are superior -- this is what the First Order says.

Her Cadets are a rarity among units, she knows this, half comprised of species not Human. MK-2942 does not believe that the First Order has lied to her about anything -- the First Order does not lie. Her Cadets are merely an exception to the norm within the First Order, this is all. Her Cadets are  _exceptional_.

This is a test, she knows it. MK-2942 is intelligent, for a Cadet, a Junior Trooper, and she intends to pass this test as she has passed all others: with no mistakes.

This is how it works within the First Order: MK-2942 does not deliberately look for classified information which she is not allowed to have access to, because this would be treason, and her purpose is to  _serve_ the First Order. However, she cannot turn off her ears, and there are things that she knows, things that all Cadets know, some even before they have passed out of primaries -- like how Officers sometimes snag a Trooper for their own fancies, or see an alien on the world that they are stationed on, and all Troopers and all worlds allied to the First Order must serve the First Order in all ways possible. The Officers will have their way; this is how it works. MK-2942 does not believe that duty to the First Order should be given a second priority at any moment, but Officers are allowed such leeway.

Occasionally, such actions will result in something unintended, covered up with a pill ninety-nine times out of a hundred, but sometimes it isn't, and Officers cannot have bastard children to tarnish their high standing, no more than they can marry a Trooper or a prostitute. Therefore, a fraction of partial Humans makes up the Trooper and Cadet forces of the First Order, the bastard children tucked neatly into a sea of white masks and numbers and letters, where the children can serve the First Order and the Officers can continue with their lives. This is how it works.

Half of the unit which MK-2942 oversees is comprised of these children. The First Order does not lie, she knows this, and she understands what the First Order has said, but her Cadets are _capable_. Her Cadets can serve with equal ability to all other Cadets. Their testings confirm as such. Thus,  _this_ is a test, and a test she is expected to fail, because her Cadets will not be up to standard if they  _cannot_ be up to standard as the First Order expects the to be. 

But they are capable. She knows this.

The Cadets eat in a mess hall on the training base, twenty rows of twenty tables and benches bolted to the floor, two units to a table. MK-2942 watches carefully; they eat the nutrient paste provided and drink the water bulb and walk in organized columns when they need to move. She sees the derision of the Officers who supervise, the stolen half-glances of other Troopers when Officers aren't looking. PK-4771, of Rodian descent, skin a mottled kind of green and eyes wide and black in a rounded skull, breaks formation to hop around a foot meant to trip her. MK-2942 has been overseeing her Cadets for a month, and the results of the aptitude tests which PK-4771 has taken are equal or higher in score to that of her own.

Her Cadets are more than capable. Her Cadets are exceptional.

It has been a month, and she finds herself giving variations of the same speech to keep morale up in the group, disheartened as they come to know the truth which all Troopers come to know eventually, all Cadets, some even before they have passed out of primaries.

"You will prove to them that you can serve," she says to the twelve Cadets standing at attention in front of perfectly-made bunks. It is morning; they have not yet left to begin the day's training. "I will not accept less."

They click their heels and salute. “Yes, ma'am!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest in peace, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds. You were both dearly loved, and you will both be missed.
> 
> Carrie, thank you for giving us cause to smile, even in difficult times. "Drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra," indeed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been four months. This is not what I intended to happen. I am so very, very sorry.
> 
> Here's a chapter, though! In which our young rebels start to maybe think about questions they aren't supposed to be thinking about.

It is two months into their primary stage of training. PK-4768 sometimes has whispered conversations with PK-4776 when he cannot sleep during the regulated sleep cycle. PK-4776 does not always answer, and PK-4768 thinks that sometimes, when he speaks, that PK-4776 is asleep with all the other Cadets in the room, but that is okay. He knows that PK-4776 would be listening, if she were awake.

PK-4768 knows that consistent trouble sleeping means that he is supposed to report himself –- if he cannot sleep, he is less efficient. But he also knows what happens to the other Cadets who go to Medical, and what has happened to the Cadets that never even made it to primaries, and--

\--he is not scared, because good Cadets don't get scared, and he wants to be a good Cadet. But he does not want to go to Medical and report himself, either.

“Sixes,” he whispers into the dark of the room. The rest of the Cadets in his unit are sleeping, or maybe just not moving, lying on their backs like he is and pretending to sleep. “Sixes?”

There is movement above him, and PK-4776 speaks a moment later. “...Sixes?”

He does not know where the shortened designation came from, but he is very tired, and it is much shorter and easier to say than the long designation. It is not a name, like PH-2762 who is Phasma has -– Troopers do not get names, and Cadets do not get names, they do not _need_ names –- just a number. Still.

“You are Sixes.”

“Oh.”

There is no movement, and then there is, and then PK-4776 shuffles down from her bunk into his and hugs her knees to her chest. “That is not my designation.”

“No.” PK-4768 shakes his head. “Easier.”

“Easier,” she repeats. He can see her scrunching her face up as she thinks. “Makes sense.”

“Makes sense,” he agrees. Cadets are not supposed to feel, but he is glad she understands.

* * *

There are a select number of Junior Troopers given the opportunity to oversee primaries. MK-2942 bunks with nineteen others, none of whom share the same regiment designation. The First Order does not encourage lasting bonds to be formed; MK-2942 knows this. She has not seen any Cadets who trained in primaries with her in ten standard years, as the First Order randomly assigns Cadets to new training groups once they reach secondaries. Her Cadets, more than capable, will be scattered at the end of this standard year.

Following the day of training, she dismisses her Cadets to their bunk room and submits her comm and datapad for approval. She takes the allotted five minutes that she is given in the barrack's 'freshers, and she retires to her own bunk room at or before 2200 hours, the set curfew. The other Junior Troopers are never far ahead or behind of her own schedule, their routines almost identical. MK-2942 walks into the bunk room, expecting things to be exactly the same as they have been for two months previous; MK-2942 finds eleven Junior Troopers undressing in silence, folding clothes and stacking armor neatly as they go (normal, expected); MK-2942 finds three Junior Troopers already lying in their bunks (normal, expected); MK-2942 finds LJ-7000, who is assigned the bunk opposite of MK-2942, shaking in the arms of LL-3806, who is assigned a bunk at the opposite end of the room from both MK-2942 and LJ-7000.

Something feels suddenly off in her mind, in her chest-- not enough to make her report herself to Medical, not ever-- she will go through much worse before she considers reporting herself to Medical-- but it is unfamiliar enough that she finds she does not have a word for it.

She stares at LJ-7000 and LL-3806 for longer than is strictly required before turning her back to the pair and continuing her routine as it is supposed to continue. No one else in the bunk room is paying them any attention; therefore, she has no reason to either. If it was a problem, the Troopers stationed at the barrack's checkpoints would be notified; if it was a serious problem, the barrack overseer, an Officer with a permanently pinched expression that MK-2942 has learned to identify as disdain, would be notified. No one has been notified. No one else is concerned. She does not need to be concerned either.

LJ-7000 makes a faint kind of sound, like a hiccup, loud in the otherwise-silent room. MK-2942 places her helmet atop the stack of armor before her.

Late that night, when MK-2942 should be sleeping, and the bunk room is quiet but for the hum of generators, and slow, even breaths, she thinks about that sound. Quiet as it was, it is keeping her awake now, hours later. She shares a bunk room with nineteen other Junior Troopers, but only eighteen returned before curfew. The bunk above her is empty. She has not seen JT-6894 since 0500 hours when they were scheduled to wake up and begin routine.

Troopers are not supposed speak or make noise unless spoken to or ordered to speak. Troopers are not allowed contact beyond glove-to-glove at every stage following primaries. MK-2942 closes her eyes and tries to sleep, but all she can think of is the noise.

* * *

“A Junior Trooper was sent to Medical yesterday evening,” she informs her Cadets. “Forced reconditioning. Do you know why?”

Her Cadets look back at her, a dozen pairs of eyes, bright and intelligent. “No, ma'am,” says PK-4771. “The Officers never made an announcement.”

“Junior Trooper JT-6894 was caught acting outside of permitted regulations,” says MK-2942, who got part of the story out of a red-eyed LJ-7000 that morning, when the noise of everyone getting out of bed and making their bunks was enough to mask a brief and whispered conversation, and got the rest of the story from PF-3001 in the mess hall in the morning, when it was so crowded that no one would notice two Junior Troopers with their heads bent together for half a moment. “Such actions are always answered with mandatory reconditioning in Medical, do you understand? Do not get caught making such mistakes.”

“Yes, ma'am,” say her Cadets. They do not click their heels and salute, for they are sitting while MK-2942 stands and speaks, but the impression is there all the same.

It is not until the following night, when the room is dark and quiet but for the hum of generators and slow, even breaths, that she realizes she may have misspoken. She means for her Cadets to not make decisions which would be cause for their reconditioning. She has been through reconditioning. She does not care to remember it. But saying _do not get caught_ carries with it the implication that such actions are okay as long as one does not get caught doing them, and this is a false statement.

MK-2942 frowns at the bunk above her. It is empty. JT-6894 is still in Medical, certainly, or another Junior Cadet would have filled the missing gap by now. LJ-7000 was crying, which is grounds for reconditioning, and LJ-7000 was caught. And yet.

Saying _do not get caught_ carries with it the implication that such actions are okay as long as one does not get caught doing them, which she knows to be a false statement.

But what if such actions are okay regardless of whether or not one is caught at all?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know when the next chapter is going to be up; I have several things coming up in the next few weeks, and I'm almost a month behind in terms of updates on another WIP I've got going on, which is something I swore I would not be doing, but here we are regardless. That being said, if you haven't already, you should totally subscribe to the series, because there's going to be another one-shot up probably soonish. Maybe even _two_.
> 
> If you want writing related posts, updates on how things are coming in these stories, or to ask questions about what's going on, you can come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian ! And, as always, I hope you enjoyed. Comments and kudos are much appreciated.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A POV change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, uhhh....... got dark? I mean, I was expecting it to be dark, the First Order is literally raising an army of children and brainwashing them into being soldiers, but. Yeah.
> 
> Warnings for the thing ahead: suicide in the second-to-last section of text, starting with "More of the story." It's an event that was already implied in Ch1 of _do not go gentle into that good night_ , and it's still only implied here, albeit more explicitly, but it _is_ there.

It takes a while for any kind of news to reach their remote little outpost, some faraway station orbiting one of eight barren moons over a dead and barren planet in a remote system in a mostly empty corner of the galaxy. The place is ancient, manned by half a squadron of pilots, one platoon of Troopers, and maybe a handful of Officers – three, she thinks, though she's not sure. It's not her place to know anything. Troopers aren't supposed to know anything, after all – it's the first thing that they learn as Cadets, to keep silent, to not speak unless spoken to ordered to speak. And, if they do not speak, they must be dumb, right? If they do not speak, it is surely because they are _unable_ to speak.

So the Officers assume.

TN-5987 _can_ speak, though she rarely has the chance to. She thinks a lot, for lack of anything else to do. She isn't very smart – her aptitude tests were all below average, though never enough to get her decommissioned – but she did make it through all of her Cadet training without any warnings, and she's made it one standard year as a Trooper, now, without any recommissions at all.

She's not smart. Troopers aren't supposed to be smart. Troopers aren't supposed to know anything. Troopers aren't supposed to _be_ anything.

But she's not stupid. She _thinks_.

There are a couple of reasons she's come up with as to why this outpost is so far away from the rest of galactic civilization. The first is obvious: the First Order has to operate under the radar of the Alliance government. The second is more inference than anything, but she thinks, maybe, it's because whoever they're guarding is dangerous, or important, or both, and needs to be kept in this tiny, isolated corner of space away from everyone and everything.

She has a lot of time to think, and maybe the theory is a bit outlandish, but it kind of makes sense. Even if the station never gets any new orders aside from updates on Trooper rotation and acknowledgment of reports received. Even if the prisoner isn't very impressive, just a slight, silent woman in plain brown, red hair graying at the temples, a collar around her neck.

* * *

Regardless of her theories, in this remote place, the fact is that they're still far, far away from everything else, and it takes a while for news to reach them, and with so little to do beyond maintenance and guard duty, there's been an ongoing prank war. The Troopers aren't technically participating, since they don't exist under the eyes of the Officers, but the fourth-shift rotation has some amusing stories to tell during their half-hour allotted break.

No one believes the message from General Hux when it comes in.

One Trooper broke ranks-- _Starkiller_ , gone? _Starkiller_ is the battle planet meant to restore peace to the galaxy-- _Starkiller_ cannot simply just be _gone_.

But it is. Because of one Trooper.

 _Defect_ , TN-5987 reminds herself, but she doesn't really believe her words. She wanted to know if she was right about the prisoner, and she used a public data terminal, and the information about the prisoner wasn't classified at all. Her own passcodes got her through, and the passcodes of a Trooper have only the bare minimum of clearance.

The prisoner is _Skywalker, M._ And even the Troopers know that Skywalker is the enemy of the Order.

One Trooper broke ranks, and _Starkiller_ is no more. Millions of Troopers, just like her, and just like FN-2187 who is a Trooper, _just like her_. Millions of Officers, too, but she has yet to meet an Officer who acknowledges her existence.

One Trooper broke ranks.

 _One_ Trooper...

* * *

More of the story trickles in past the official announcement made by the General-- FN-2187 who is a Trooper just like her helped a Resistance pilot to escape and fought with him, and fought with a _Jedi_.

(The Officers don't want them knowing anything beyond the official announcement made by the General, but TN-5987 has found that her time spent in training is much different than her time spent out in galaxy. The routine is the same, and she knows the punishments will be the same if she is to step out of line, but they have some level of freedom out here. And, this far away from everything else, they have little to do but gossip.)

TN-5987 isn't stupid. She isn't particularly smart, but she isn't _stupid_. One Trooper broke ranks and _Starkiller_ was destroyed as a result.

One Trooper broke ranks and proved that he was – he _is_ – more than the Order has made of them all.

She doesn't eat for a day. She feels sick to her stomach, and when she tries to nibble on a nutrient bar it tastes like dirt in her mouth. Her hands shake noticeably when she drops the keycard, but she _does_ drop it, and there's no going back now.

Even if she goes back on her plan and says it's an accident, the result of this is going to be the same. A mistake like this results in decommissioning. A deliberate action like this results in decommissioning.

But it's her choice. TN-5987 knows this like she knows that FN-2187 made his own choice, and she knows, like his choice, that hers _will_ make a difference.

One Trooper brought down _Starkiller_! She can't help but laugh a bit at the insanity of it as she cleans the parts of her blaster-- _this_ needs to work, if nothing else. One Trooper brought down the battle planet, with a Jedi and a pilot and-- _and_ , though this is rumor like the rest of it, and not nearly as substantial as the rest she's heard-- a map to Luke Skywalker!

TN-5987 isn't particularly smart, and she's never been particularly brave. She isn't like FN-2187 who learned to make a choice like this all on his own. But FN-2187 is the reason why she knows she can make her own choices.

A Jedi, and a pilot, and a _Trooper_.

She's made her choice, and she dropped the keycard.

She's made her choice, and if she is to die, it's going to be on her own terms.

* * *

There is a hearing called by the Officers. MK-2942 worries about this announcement, made at 0500 hours when the barracks first awakes to begin routine, thinking it perhaps relates to the relocation of JT-6894, but then she hears the mattress creaking above her, sees JT-6894 climb slow out of the bunk from the corner of her eye and remove armor from the stack next to her own. Her movements are too slow to meet standards, and she will not be in position when the Officers enter to perform inspection before departure.

LJ-7000 is a flurry of motion, and LJ-7000 assists JT-6894 in movement though contact beyond glove-to-glove is not allowed in any stage beyond primaries, and not a one of the other Junior Troopers says a word. MK-2942 puts on her helmet, which does not allow her to see beyond her periphery, and turns to stand at attention at the end of her bunk. If she stares at the wall opposite, she cannot see the violation of regulations, and if she cannot see it, she is therefore not aware of it.

LJ-7000 and JT-6894 are in position when the Officers enter. The Junior Troopers file out of the barracks, line up with their Cadet groupings, and stand in formation in the atrium. The screen above them, larger than life, projects the prerecorded message from General Hux, sharp uniform and cold features. The Officers admire him. MK-2942 knows that to treat an Officer with disrespect results in mandatory reconditioning, and so she respects General Hux, but she sees him as no different than the other Officers she reports to. Just that he is higher in rank, almost mythical in his position. An Officer amongst Officers. But they are all the same to the Troopers.

“ _Soldiers of the First Order,”_ says General Hux. There is a pause; the assembled Cadets and Troopers and Junior Troopers salute stiffly in response.

“ _Soldiers of the First Order,”_ says General Hux, _“there is a traitor within our ranks. A defector. A defect.”_

A Trooper.

A Trooper of the FN units, a few standard cycles before MK-2942-- a Trooper of the FN units who committed the ultimate treason. A defector. A defect. He who helped a

Resistance pilot escape from the flagship _Finalizer._ A Trooper of the FN units who _ran_.

The battle planet _Starkiller_ is gone as well. The Order's weapon which would help them to bring peace to the galaxy, gone. Because of one who dared to step out of line.

The First Order makes it very clear what they will do to those who step out of line.

MK-2942 files out with her Cadets, lockstep, the General's eyes blazing in the forefront of her mind.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Names are given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the thing ahead: none

MK-2942 frowns at the comm logs from the latest set of sims that her Cadets have run. Her Cadets are more than capable-- her Cadets are _exceptional_ , surpassing even her own expectations. They will make fine Troopers, someday, and she knows that their results will propel her further down the path to becoming a Trooper herself-- a Trooper with the makings of an Officer.

Troopers are not supposed to feel, but MK-2942 is proud all the same. And... concerned.

“Explain,” she says when they have assembled at the end of the training day, when the sims have all been run and the results compiled. Her Cadets blink at the transcript projected before them, as though they see nothing out of the ordinary. “The shortened designations, explain.”

“Easier,” says PK-4768 – _Sixate_ , as the others called him, relaying information and coordinates on a digital battlefield.

“Shortened designations are faster to say,” PK-4776 – _Sixes_ – adds on.

“They save time,” PK-4769 – _Niner_ – tells her, and MK-2942 sees the logic in it. Still. Cadets are not Troopers are not _people_. Officers have names, and Phasma who was PH-2762, but not Cadets. Not Troopers. And _Sixate_ and _Sixes_ and _Niner_ and _Seveno_ are closer to numbers than names, but MK-2942 does not want to risk anything. Her Cadets are exceptional-- she will not fail, and she will not let them fail.

Still.

“Sensible,” she says before she can think better of it. “List off, so I know who is who when reviewing your runs.”

 _Peekay_ ; _Sev_ ; _Sixate_ ; _Niner_ ; _Seveno_ ; _Pop_ ; _Two_ - _Sevens_ ; _Delta_ ; _Doubles_ ; _Kay_ ; _Sixes_ ; _Sevens_. She commits them to memory.

“You're Em-Kay,” Pop says with something that, if any of them were Officers, MK-2942 would identify as cheer. “You don't run the sims with us, but we didn't want to leave you out.”

“We're a unit, until primaries end,” continues Two-Sevens.

MK-2942 dismisses them; they eat their last rations of the day in the mess hall before retiring to separate barracks. MK-2942 thinks. MK-2942 thinks for a long time.

And if she spends much of her designated rest cycle pondering shortened designations for her bunkmates (merely out of curiosity, of course) instead of sleeping, well. The Officers do not know her thoughts. Em-Kay knows that they will be none the wiser.

There is a riot on the far side of the training facility within a week of the announcement sent by the General. Resistance sympathizers. Em-Kay's first instinct is revulsion, that anyone would betray their Order-- and then a wash of cold across her skin as she thinks _not my Order_ , her own mind a traitor to itself.

* * *

Em-Kay has the makings of an Officer in her, she has been told, but she has also heard the Officers speaking of Phasma who was PH-2762 who is a Trooper just like them-- Officers speaking of Phasma, an Officer, too, in her own right, with the same contempt that they give to the Troopers and Cadets under their own command. The Officers do not worry about the Troopers and Cadets overhearing, because the Troopers and Cadets are not people.

And she doubts, because if Phasma is not above the derision of Officers, then she really _is_ a Trooper just like them. All the makings of an Officer and none of the respect.

The Order is everything, and she has known nothing else, but--

\--it is not hers. Nor her Cadets', nor any other Trooper's.

There is a riot, quashed with ease, and security tightens, but the Resistance sympathizers – in the Trooper ranks! – broadcast their intents through a sliced comm system all across the base. Fighting for Finn who was FN-2187 who was a Trooper just like them.

Finn who was FN-2187 who was a Trooper, just like them, a _traitor_ in the ranks of the Order-- a Trooper now considered a person. Em-Kay thinks of him often; if Finn who was FN-2187 can cause so much with a choice all his own-- then-- _then_ \----

* * *

Em-Kay stands at attention, eyes forward, shoulders back, and does not make eye contact with the Officer in front of her. Officers do not like impertinence.

“Your training unit has been reported for calling one another by... _nicknames_ ,” he says, and his distaste is palpable. Em-Kay does not acknowledge the sinking feeling in her stomach, a feeling maybe best categorized as _dread_. Cadets do not have emotions. “Are these allegations true?”

“Yes, sir,” she says, because she is a good Cadet and she does not speak unless called upon or when spoken to.

“Why?” he asks.

“Efficiency, sir,” she says.

He does not seem to expect this. He looks at her with-- some expression. She cannot put a word to it. “Explain, Cadet.”

“It is faster to say Em-Kay than it is to say MK-2942, sir,” she says, because she is a good Cadet and she follows orders when they are given. “It is faster to say Sevens than it is to say PK-4777. Shortened designations require less time to give orders to an individual. When they move to combat drills in their training, it will be easier to warn Sevens of an unexpected attack than to warn PK-4777.”

The Officer seems displeased. _That_ is an expression she recognizes. “When Troopers enter combat, Cadet, they are to devote all resources and attention to the goal of the mission, not to one another.”

That does not make sense, to Em-Kay. She is very intelligent, however, and does not phrase it as such.

“Does a mission not have a greater chance of success with more Troopers, sir?”

“It _does_ , Cadet, and that is why _all_ Troopers must dedicate themselves fully to the mission, not by distracting themselves with the whereabouts of every _other_ Trooper who is on the mission with them. If an entire unit is deployed, do you expect to be able to keep track of all of them? Your training unit will cease using these names. A second report will result in reconditioning. Dismissed, Cadet.”

Anger is another expression she knows. Em-Kay sees it on the Officer's face.

Em-Kay feels it burning in her chest, and lets _nothing_ show on her face. Cadets do not feel emotion.

“You are to cease using names for one another,” she tells the twelve when they next assemble. “It is an order from an Officer.”

"Are shortened designations names?" Pop asks, and Em-Kay freezes.

 _Your training unit will cease using these names_.

Cadets are not Troopers are not people. But they have names, by the decree of an Officer.

Em-Kay needs to think about this more.

In the interim:

"You are to cease using names for one another," she repeats, "within earshot of any Officer, or on sims where comm logs are recorded. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am!" they say in unison, and they click their heels and salute, sharing secretive grins amongst themselves.

 


	6. Chapter 6

“We have names.”

JT-6894 is still struggling from the aftermath of reconditioning-- LJ-7000 and LL-3806 have been helping her more than is allowed by Order regulations, and none of their bunkmates have said a word, but it's only a matter of time before someone slips up and the Officers take notice-- but even JT-6894 is looking at her as though she is spouting nonsense. Em-Kay sighs and does her best to explain in the short time that they have; the barrack 'freshers are open for ten minutes to each of them, once a day. No Officer has set foot inside, and no Officer ever will. It is a safe place to talk.

“My Cadets--”

“They aren't your Cadets?” LJ-7000 sounds confused, and LL-3806 makes a face into the spray of the 'fresher. Water drains through a grate at their feet.

“My Cadets gave one another shortened designations to maximize efficiency when communicating with one another.” Em-Kay thinks of the Officer's orders, and her brilliant Cadets, a unit that will cease to exist in four standard months, once primaries end and the next cycle comes through. “An Officer ordered that I go to his office, and there he ordered my unit to _cease using these names_. An _Officer_. So, therefore, by an Officer's admission, we have names.”

LJ-7000 and LL-3806 continue routine motions with confused faces, but JT-6894 makes a very soft noise, her gaze still slightly unfocused.

“You chose your names like Phasma who was PH-2764.”

Em-Kay takes a moment of her own to think about the words just spoken-- Phasma is an Officer in her own right, and Troopers are not Officers are not people-- Phasma is all but a _legend_ in her own right, the perfect Trooper. Em-Kay hardly dares to put herself in the same sentence as Phasma, much less to compare herself to her, but-- JT-6894 has a point. Troopers are not Officers are not people, full stop, no exceptions. And Phasma is the perfect Trooper. Perhaps Phasma who was PH-2762 made the best of her situation like Em-Kay and her unit of bastard Cadets have made the best of theirs, names in loopholes.

Troopers are not Officers are not people, but she knows she looks no different from the Officers outside of their uniforms, and they can give themselves _names_. Only people have names.

“Like Phasma who was PH-2762,” she agrees.

“An Officer _really_ said you could have names?” LL-3806 repeats dubiously.

“An Officer said we _couldn't_ have names,” Em-Kay corrects. “I didn't know we had them to begin.”

“Huh.”

And the next day, in ten minutes of time, in conversations too quiet to be overheard by anyone else:

“Ella is the name of the woman in the holofilm we are required to watch,” says LL-3806, “and there cannot be a different name for everyone in the whole galaxy. That is too many names. So she would not mind if I used it, too.”

“She's not real,” LJ-7000 points out at the same time JT-6894 says,

“Wasn't she the Resistance traitor?”

“No, that was the other one,” Em-Kay answers.

“Oh. Yes. Reconditioning.”

“Yes,” Ella agrees, and LJ-7000, and Em-Kay.

And the next day:

“Can we just be our letters?” LJ-7000 asks.

“I'm letters,” says Em-Kay, “and some of my Cadets are numbers, but those are also names.”

“I will be LJ.” Em-Kay catches the brief glance LJ gives to JT-6894, staring unfocused at the wall in front of her face. “Easier to remember. Hard to remember some things, sometimes.”

“Yes,” Em-Kay agrees. Ella looks at JT-6894 as well. JT-6894 does not appear to notice, but she does speak.

“Jay, for now. Not sure.”

* * *

Em-Kay ponders.

They have all heard the story of FN-2187. FN-2187 who was a Trooper who became  _Finn_ , who was just like them but had done something none of them could ever dream to do. And Em-Kay knows that she has a name like Finn who was FN-2187, and so do her Cadets-- Em-Kay knows that a name means that one is a  _person_. And Finn who was FN-2187 who was a Trooper just like them is a person, and that means that they are people, too. The Officers want to turn it into propaganda. Want to make the Troopers afraid of what happens if they step out of line. Decommissioning and reconditioning does the most of it, but a Trooper who  _dares_ in the way that Finn who was FN-2187 dared has the might of the First Order after them.

A Trooper who  _dares_ in the way that Finn who was FN-2187 dared is... important.

Em-Kay is starting to have ideas.

The thought feels dangerous.

They are three-quarters of the way through primaries; her Cadets will cycle out at the end, and she will receive a new batch to train.

Em-Kay checks the log of inbound ships for the next standard month. Just to make sure there aren't any scheduling errors or overlaps. Just in case.


	7. Chapter 7

She is still the model of a perfect Cadet, a rising Junior Trooper, and she does not do anything to give the First Order cause to question her. She does not go looking for classified information, because doing such would be treason, and it is not the time for treason yet.

But the Troopers and the Cadets know things-- they cannot turn off their ears, after all, and Officers and personnel tend to say a great many things when there is no one else to overhear the conversation. Troopers and Cadets are not Officers are not people.

They _know_ things. They know that Finn who was FN-2187 really did escape from the First Order. The rumors vary: Finn who was FN-2187 stole a TIE fighter (probable), Finn who was FN-2187 joined the Resistance (plausible), Finn who was FN-2187 was on Starkiller Base before it exploded and escaped _again_ (unlikely), Finn who was FN-2187 hurled Captain Phasma who was PH-2762 into a garbage compactor (impossible, however much Em-Kay's Cadets love the image of it). No one is able to get the story straight, with so much of their information overheard from second- and third-hand conversations, with Starkiller Base being long gone and millions of Troopers gone with it, but there has to be some element of truth.

The First Order still lists Finn who was FN-2187 as a traitor, offering a bounty of a quarter-million credits to anyone who brings him back, dead or alive. Therefore, Finn who was FN-2187 has to have escaped the First Order and survived, because otherwise the First Order _would not care_.

Finn who was FN-2187 lived to escape the First Order, and for the first time, Em-Kay thinks she understands the definition of the word _hope_.

* * *

She isn't the only one. She hears reports come in, hears Officers complaining to one another in the hallways and disregarding completely the Junior Trooper doing repairs or marching on patrol with a unit of Cadets behind-- a Trooper on a prison outpost who let a maximum security prisoner escape before decommissioning itself; a handful of Troopers doing supply runs that vanished en route; training facilities like the one Em-Kay is in now turning into the grounds of armed rebellions, quickly and efficiently squashed, but not before word gets out.

Not before she can hear the stories.

She lies awake in her bunk one night, listening to other Junior Troopers breathe, slow and even. She cannot sleep-- does not particularly want to sleep, though she knows she is well into the seven and a half hour cycle allotted to them, and there will be no time for rest until the next cycle some twenty hours away. She thinks. She thinks a lot.

The First Order, she knows, is wrong about some things. Her Cadets, half of whom are non-Human, are just as or even more capable than other Cadets in this base. There is no correlation between their blood and their intelligence. The First Order would say otherwise, but Em-Kay knows her Cadets, and she knows the First Order, in regards to them, is wrong.

But if the First Order, who does not lie, who is never wrong, is wrong about _that_ , well--

Cadets are not people. Troopers are not people. Cadets are Cadets and Troopers are Troopers, but Em-Kay thinks about this tonight, as she has thought about it on many nights, and thinks some more. She is a she, she knows this, though the First Order only refers to all of the Troopers and Cadets as _it_. Things do not get to be people. Still, if she puts her armor on an Officer, he is still an Officer; likewise, if she wears an Officer's uniform, she is still a Junior Trooper. But there is no _difference_ between them, not that Em-Kay can tell, beyond the division of Officers and Troopers and Cadets.

But besides their names, what _is_ the difference?

She is not a thing. She is not an _it_. She is a she, which makes her a person, but if she is a person, can she not be a Trooper?

She cannot follow the First Order's logic.

What is the difference?

* * *

 

So--

\--she wants to leave.

She hardly dares to think it, terrified that the Officers can somehow read her mind, that if she thinks too _loudly_ then she will be caught, and she will go to reconditioning or Medical or _worse_ \--

But she wants to leave.

And she wants others to leave, to have that opportunity.

So she plans, and she plans, and she keeps her tiny Cadets out of the loop so they cannot accidentally give something away, and she plans, and she looks. Her Cadets will come with her, of course, she knows this. MK-2949 had been her bunkmate during primaries. They used to tell stories to one another. LJ-7000 and JT-6894 are much closer than regulations allow. PF-3001 has the most reconditions out of any Cadets in the entire base, not because he is reckless, but because he is very stubborn and _very_ unlucky.

She can tell them. She can make sure that others know it is possible to get away. To leave.

She wants to leave.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. Hey. _Everything is going to be okay._

The time she picks, in the end, is risky.

Her Cadets are transferring into secondaries by the end of the month, less than two standard weeks away. More ships are arriving as more Cadets are brought in to be processed; furthermore, there is to be a base inspection around the same time as her Cadets transfer out. The base will be under heightened security, more scrutiny-- there will be Officers everywhere, _important_ Officers, perhaps even Phasma who was PH-2762 _herself_ , and disrupted routines, leading to more variables that might be out of her control. Em-Kay remembers such things from her own transfer into primaries, and primaries into secondaries. But there will be so many ships left unattended with not enough Troopers on duty to guard them. So many people that no one will notice another set of Cadets marching to the hangars.

It could be so, so easy to walk in and _take_ one.

Em-Kay says nothing; saying her plans aloud makes them more real than when they are just in her thoughts, and if her plans are real, _tangible_ , she might get caught. But she holds her ideas tight in her mind, keeps them close, hidden.

* * *

“Seveno,” she says the next time she meets with her Cadets. She does not say a word of ideas to them, does not know if one of them would submit a report. She doubts it. Her Cadets are smart, and a report on one of them puts them all under scrutiny, and they know that they need to survive. But there is always the chance.

“Ma'am!” Seveno salutes.

“Begin studying the flight sims; I want all of your marks to go up.”

One cannot learn how to fly in less than a month, but her Cadets have already been in multiple simulations normally reserved for secondaries, or even the Junior Troopers such as Em-Kay herself. The First Order lost many, many Troopers with the destruction of _Starkiller_.

“Yes, ma'am!” He salutes again, and her Cadets scramble to follow orders.

“Seveno,” she says again before he can turn away, and though the words in her head are all jumbled up, Em-Kay does her very best. “...I am not an Officer. Salutes are for them, not be.”

Proving her statement with the sheer audacity of commenting on it at all, Kay pipes up from the back of the group. “Other Cadets say you're too soft on us.”

“You all pass your tests.” Em-Kay doesn't contradict her. She is right, in truth. “How I make sure of that doesn't matter.”

* * *

Em-Kay isn't with them when _it_ happens.

They know that they are but Troopers-- not even Troopers, still just Cadets. And more importantly, they are _less_ than Cadets, the bastard children. They know what they are. They know their place.

(They know that they are smart. Two-Sevens scores highest on his aptitude tests out of all of them; Sev and Peekay tie for marksmanship; little Pop remains the best at scouting, moving in silence. The other Cadets dislike them for their bloodlines, yes, but also because they are _better_. They know that Em-Kay is training them in a way that Cadets are not supposed to be trained. They know that Em-Kay is planning _something_ , if not what.)

They know that due to shortage of personnel and Troopers, Em-Kay is not with them during mealtimes and other portions of the day, on a rotating guard duty at the hangar bays. She will not be with them during mealtimes and other portions of the day so long as new Cadets are being shipped in and Officers are present for the base inspection.

Em-Kay is not with them when _it_ happens.

When they are in a too-crowded mess hall, bastards of the lot, open to a greater number of threats without Em-Kay as a deterrent.

When they are alone in a too-crowded mess hall, in single-file rows of six, side by side, making their way to a designated table.

When _it_ happens, too quick for any of them to catch the details off, to stop. When an elbow jabs out, sharp and pointed, or a foot meant to trip. When little Pop, hybrid DNA the most noticeably apparent of them all, loses her balance, and there is a crash and a spill, and an Officer's face slowly reddening in anger.

Sixes grabs Delta's hand and _squeezes_ to keep him from running forward, and they hold their breath.

* * *

The day ends as it always ends, after the change in routine. Em-Kay, tired, feet sore from an evening guard shift in the hangar bays, passes through the Cadets' barracks on her way back to the 'freshers, where she can go over the plan finally spoken aloud to Ella, LJ, Jet, PF-3001, who hasn't picked a name, yet, but has been thinking long and hard about the matter. She wants to check in on her Cadets, knowing that they put up with more than most between their high aptitude scores and their bloodline.

There are eleven frightened faces in the bunkroom when she opens the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the thing ahead: brief description/implications of how decommissioning works in the second paragraph of the last section -- "She's never been this far into Medical before ... open on schedule." Details in the end notes.

_Decommissioning_ , say her Cadets in terrified whispers and fragmented sentences. _It happened in the mess hall. Pop. Officers. Furious. Decommissioning_.

 _No_ , says Em-Kay, mind blank with fear yet eerily, rationally calm. _**No.**_

* * *

 ****PF-3001 explains to her how to get to Medical from the barracks. He knows which route to take, having traveled it so many times before.

Ella is the only one after Em-Kay who has not yet lost a Cadet out of their groups, and after the incident in the mess hall, one of the few Junior Troopers still in good standing; Em-Kay and her Cadets are under scrutiny, now. Ella leaves the 'freshers, walks up to a data terminal, and downloads the guard rotations for the graveyard shift that night, and no one blinks twice.

Jay is scouring the markings off of her armor which designate her as still being a part of the Cadet programs when Em-Kay enters the bunks. She hands Em-Kay the smooth white plating, helmet on top, and nods.

LJ approaches one of the guard Troopers at the barrack checkpoint to ask numerous pointless questions about poor water pressure in the 'freshers and other idle concerns.

Em-Kay, dressed in the armor of a Trooper, leaves with no intention of ever coming back.

* * *

Her Cadets are wide awake in their bunkroom, she knows. She told them to stay awake until she returned with Pop, and they had nodded, solemn, scared.

Em-Kay is light on her feet. She was good at scouting, leading patrols. She is smart; not every Junior Trooper is granted the opportunity to train new Cadets. Most often, primaries are overseen by Troopers or designated personnel. Though her heart is pounding in her ears so loud that it drowns out even the sound of her own footsteps, and the eery calm of earlier has been replaced with something tense and coiled, she memorizes the rotation schedule and slips between patrols down empty corridors. Security footage is not reviewed until the morning. She is not seen.

Medical is its own building, next to the facility designated for Officers and personnel. Large and square. PF-3001 has given her detailed instructions to get her inside, but the location within for decommissioning is a different one than reconditioning. They all know what it is, and how, but not where. She will be on her own, then-- and she still has to get Pop _out_.

But she will.

She promised.

Enter through the front gates with a senior Trooper's passcode; the same Troopers are often on duty to escort those who have fallen out of line, and PF-3001 knows most of their serial numbers.

Walk down the main corridor, going straight for as long as possible, and take the turbolift on the left.

Up four floors.

The control hub is empty this late at night, all the Officers and medical personnel able to retire for the night. The control hub is dark. Em-Kay rips her helmet off and shoves it into a corner, out of sight and out from under her feet, and uses the same passcode which got her in to pull up a map. Notes her own location, the room she stands in, and the corridor she needs to get to.

There are multiple Troopers slated for decommissioning; she cannot rescue all of them.

Em-Kay memorizes the route-- Troopers are good at memorizing things, they must be, it is an important skill-- and tries to breathe through her panic and finds that her hands are still shaking. Her Cadets. Her Cadets.

Replace her helmet. Leave the way she came. Return through the turbolift, down six floors; decommissionings take place underground, out of sight, out of mind.

Another control hub, as dark as the first. Em-Kay removes her helmet, sets it on an empty chair. Goes to pull up a list of who is slated for decommissioning with the passcode PF-3001 gave to her.

_ACCESS DENIED_

She looks at it. Stares at the words like they might change.

Tries again.

_ACCESS DENIED_

“If it didn't work the first time, it won't work the second.”

Stifles a scream.

* * *

The figure, the stranger, regards her from the shadows, face hidden, voice unfamiliar.

“If you want to get your friend out and leave, that code isn't going to work.”

Coruscanti accent. Spoken matter of fact, straight to the point.

“...You are planning on leaving, aren't you?”

Em-Kay stares at the stranger, cloaked in armorweave and a hood that casts their face into shadow. She isn't able to keep the panic from her face.

“...How did you get here?” she finally manages to ask, with as much authority as she can muster. “This area is restricted.”

“Restricted to everyone but Officers, and designated personnel, yes,” the stranger agrees. “That includes Junior Troopers and Cadets, particularly Junior Troopers who plan to break their trainees out of Medical.”

Em-Kay feels horribly cold, all of a sudden-- she cannot speak, and words stick in her throat, and the First Order trains fear out of those who serve it but she is no longer going to serve the First Order and she is _terrified_ \--

\--only other Troopers call them _Junior Troopers_ \--

_how do they know how do they know_

“Breathe, child,” the stranger murmurs, sounding almost apologetic, and reaches out to brush their fingers against her forehead. The panic fades immediately, replaced by a gentle calm, and Em-Kay stares at them. She can see just enough in the dim light to know that the stranger is smiling. “I am no threat to you here.”

“But-- how?” asks Em-Kay, who does not understand, even though the tendency to ask questions has all but been squashed out of her.

If she is going to leave the First Order, she should no longer follow their rules, right?

The smile grows; the stranger's voice drops to a whisper. “It's a secret, but it will make sense eventually, I promise you that. Listen, now, and listen carefully, because this is very important--” Em-Kay shuffles forward a few steps instinctively, the calm still present, though she does not know why she feels such an inexplicable trust-- “You aren't going to have a lot of time after you break out your friend. The alarms will go off eventually. You and your Cadets are going to need to get all the way across the base before they lock down the shipyards and put up the planetary shield to keep you from leaving. These are access codes, they'll help you get past overrides--” The stranger takes Em-Kay's hand, presses a keycard into it, followed by a datachip. “--and these are coordinates. To the last known location of the Resistance base.”

“ _Why?”_ Em-Kay repeats again, almost desperately.

She still isn't scared, and she doesn't know why, because she should still be terrified and they're running out of time, and this is a stranger in a restricted area who knows their plans despite her having told no one, even the Cadets do not know all the details, and if a stranger knows, why doesn't the Order? Where are the alarms?

Why has no one stopped them?

“You aren't alone,” the stranger says. “You're the first to leave in such a large group, but you aren't alone. Surely you've heard the stories, the reports filtering back? The Troopers in rebellion. The defectors.” Em-Kay keeps staring, struggling to process-- “You aren't alone. You aren't the only one who thinks that this is wrong. Enough questions, now, you have to go quickly, and I can only buy you so much time. There's a phrase programmed into the datachip, memorize it word for word when you get to the Resistance, tell it to them. They'll know I sent you, and they'll protect you.”

“But--” _No more questions_ is an order, and some of the fear trickles back when she realizes that she has deliberately disobeyed-- she is choosing the path of traitor, _yes_ , but that is not face to face, looking someone face-to-face and saying _no_ \--

No more orders.

“How did you get here?” she asks. “How did you know?”

“What did I tell you earlier?” the stranger counters with a question of their own. “This area is restricted to Officers and designated personnel.”

Em-Kay blinks, and the stranger stands, and then she is alone again, tucked away into the shadowy corners of Medical, datachip and keycard still in an outstretched hand.

* * *

Pop is asleep when Em-Kay slips into the room, curled into as tight of a ball as she can manage, dried tear tracks on her face. The keycard hasn't set off any alarms, so far, and it's gotten Em-Kay access to records and things she should never have had clearance to. Whoever the stranger, they have to be a high-ranked Officer. Knowing that the First Order is rebelling on more levels than just the Troopers is reassuring.

She's never been this far into Medical before. This is where decommissioning takes place, she knows-- no Trooper or Cadet that gets this far will ever come back. It's clean, white, sterile; the rooms are cramped, impossibly small. Pop doesn't have a mattress or a pillow or blankets as she sleeps, still wearing her Cadet blacks, just a kind of shelf that juts out from the wall. The vents in the wall are closed, for now, but she knows that come the morning, they'll open on schedule.

“Pop,” she whispers, reaching out to touch her shoulder. Her trainee is cold, shivering in her sleep. “Pop, get up.”

“...?” Her eyes shutter open slowly, then go wide. “Em-Kay--?”

“Shh!” She presses a hand over her mouth, muffling the words. “We're going to get the others, and we're going to get a ship, and we're leaving, but you have to be _quiet_. Just like scouting, okay?”

Pop stares at her, then nods, shaky. “I can do that.”

“Let's go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: above warnings -- decommissioning takes place in individual gas chambers.
> 
> Almost at the end of Em-Kay's arc, and then to the next ones -- Ella, and LJ, and Jay, and our mystery guest. Apologies in advance for future cliffhangers (but... not really...... I'm a writer; we live for cliffhangers).
> 
> As always, thank you very much for reading, and I hope you liked the chapter. Comments and kudos are ever-appreciated.
> 
> For more writerly things, come follow me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Everything is still going to be fine._

LJ knows that their bunkroom is going to come under suspicion when Em-Kay leaves with her Cadets, and she knows that Em-Kay will not come back tonight, and she knows that if none of them report Em-Kay missing then they will be under _more_ , and she knows that if her bunkroom comes under suspicion, then they will likely be up for reconditioning-- or decommissioning. And that is not allowed.

So she does what she must, after waiting as long as she is able, and she can only hope that she has waited long enough. She slips out into the night, past curfew.

“Sir,” she says to the Officer who is in charge of the barracks. Her stomach feels strange-- Troopers are not supposed to speak to Officers unless spoken to or ordered to speak. Her stomach feels strange enough that she would actually consider reporting to Medical, if the circumstances were different. She wouldn't follow through. But she would consider it. “Sir, MK-2942 is absent from the bunkroom.”

The Officer blinks, then frowns. “Why didn't you report this earlier?” he demands, moving to a terminal. “Any Cadet who's out past curfew is supposed to be reported immediately.”

“I believed that MK-2942 was acting under orders, sir.”

 _Believed_ is better than _assumed,_ because _assumed_ implies agency. _Believed_ implies other things, but LJ considers it the safer word choice, regardless.

The Officer mutters a banned word under his breath and starts up a report, harsh commands, and LJ is forgotten about. She does not leave; she has not yet been dismissed, but she has informed the Officers as is required of her, and having filled that purpose, she has no further immediate use.

She hopes that Em-Kay has found Pop and is already en route to the hangars with her Cadets, or perhaps even boarding a ship. They talked about this part of the plan-- Em-Kay doesn't want her bunkroom to be in danger any more than LJ, but more than that, she wants _out_. LJ has waited as long as she can without possible risk of being labeled a traitor along with Em-Kay, and Em-Kay knows that LJ is going to be the one to inform the Officers of their treason. But the alarms are already sounding, the base going into lockdown, and the clock rapidly begins to count downwards on the time they have left to escape.

“The hell are you still standing there for?” the Officer demands, red in the face. “You know the drill-- get back to your bunk!”

* * *

Ella is awake when LJ returns, and Jay, and PF-3001. They are sitting upright, and watch her come back in. They say nothing, but none of them sleep well that night, kept awake by the distant sound of klaxons.

* * *

The alarms blare, and Sixes muffles a shriek into her hands, and Peekay mumbles a banned word. Em-Kay isn't sure how or where he heard it, but now isn't the time to question anything. Pop makes a faint, faint sound in the back of her throat.

Troopers don't make reports unless another Trooper can back them up. The chances are less that the report will be incorrect, then, and the chances of reconditioning, therefore, are also less. So even though it is past curfew, and even though there are never schedule departures so late at night, no one reports the Trooper leading the Cadets, blank-faced in two rows of six, towards the hangars. The hangars flooded with guards, and Troopers, and the alarms blaring out are as good a confirmation as any that they _aren't_ supposed to be there--

But her Cadets are already moving up the ramp to the shuttle. The stranger's passcodes disengaged the tether cable. Her Cadets are already in the ship, almost. _Almost_.

“Put these coordinates in, power up the engines,” she snaps, snagging Sevens by the arm and shoving the datachip into his hand. “Power up the guns. Leave on my orders.”

"But what about  _you_ \--"

"Don't worry about me."

"Em-Kay--"

_"Run!"_

He runs. They all run. Em-Kay yanks off her helmet and chucks it behind her into the ship, away-- for good, this time-- the better to see, and takes cover behind a crate, and opens fire before anyone else can. Her aim is true-- she scored well on marksmanship-- her Cadets are in, and the floor rumbles with the shuttle's engines--

The whine of the shuttle's weaponry powering up, and a deafening roar, and heat near-scalding--

Up the ramp. All but collapse onto the floor. “ _Move out_.”

Her Cadets are just children, but they know something of flying-- directions, and how to follow a set of coordinates, and the direction is simply up and out through the hangar bay doors before they can close, and the coordinates are given to them--

Up, and up, and up, and _away_.

* * *

The single ship takes to light speed.

For a moment, everything is eerily silent but for the hum of the engines and the ragged breathing of the thirteen who only just made it on board.

“Em-Kay?” Pop asks, sounding very small-- yet very loud in the quiet, the first of them who dares to speak. “Em-Kay, you're bleeding--”

“Told you not to worry about me,” Em-Kay responds, gaze unfocused, a grayish kind of hue to her skin, voice faint, blood trickling through the fingers of the hand pressed against her side. Her white armor is cracked and streaked with color. Three Cadets spring to their feet to catch her before she can hit the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and comments and kudos are much appreciated. For more writerly things -- now including a list of characters in _i, rebel_ since there's a lot of names and designations -- come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian 
> 
> floraobsidian.tumblr.com/post/155052111872/i-rebel-character-list


	11. Chapter 11

The trip through hyperspace is largely silent, Em-Kay's Cadets huddled in clumps, Sevens and Two-Sevens and Seveno up in the cockpit and Pop and Sixate and Sixes down in the medbay and the rest of them trying not to look at one another or burst into tears.

“She's gonna wake up, right?” Niner murmurs into the silence, sitting on the floor, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. It's a habit Em-Kay was never able to break her of-- it isn't like it would _matter_ , she always said, if she's behind a helmet, right?

“Of _course_ she's gonna wake up,” Delta snaps back, a bit too sharply, a bit too loud for the silence. “She's gotta wake up.”

But they try to speak only in whispers, listening to the low words drifting up from the medbay and down from the cockpit-- Pops is still with Em-Kay, and they can't let her hear anything, don't want her to hear, because they know, they _know_ \-- nothing is sure, and Em-Kay is hurt, and Em-Kay might not survive. Not everyone can survive the First Order, and not everyone does. Not a one of them knows what the Resistance does to those hurt as badly as Em-Kay is, and so she might not wake up, and even if she _does--_

They know, even here, even free (free?), things aren't okay just yet.

But they are _free_.

Better to die free, Em-Kay whispers in the backs of their minds.

Two-Sevens awkwardly climbs down the ladder from the cockpit, gaps between the rungs too big for him, shuffles into the main room of the ship. His eyes are rimmed red. No one mentions.

“Cut down the jump coordinates so we get there faster,” he says, voice rough, rubbing at his face with small, small hands. “Still throw anybody off tryin' to find us, just like Em-Kay taught.”

“Not awake yet,” Peekay says in response to the question he can't figure out how to ask.

Two-Sevens sniffs, face twisting, and climbs back up.

* * *

“ _Unidentified shuttle, please respond. Unidentified shuttle...”_

Part of the problem is that they haven't ever needed to use the comm systems in a shuttle before, and they have to scramble to figure it out. But the bigger part of the problem is that they don't know what to _say_.

“You have the code Em-Kay said to use?” Two-Sevens asks, and Sevens nods.

“Memorized it,” she says, because Cadets are supposed to be good at memorizing. Even if they aren't Cadets anymore, they're all still good at it.

“I don't know,” Seveno keeps saying, over and over again, shaking slightly. He's standing on a box of rations to reach the console and all of the buttons. “I don't know. I don't know. I think...?”

He flips a switch. Looks at Sevens. Sevens looks back, panicked.

“Um,” she says into the microphone. “This is. We are. Former Cadets, of the First Order. Units PK-4766 through PK-4777. We were given base coordinates by an unknown source. Um.”

“The _words_ ,” Two-Sevens whispers. Seveno looks ready to faint, either from terror like the other two or relief he actually managed to use the comm system correctly.

“And. And. Resistance is neither-- rebellion, nor tyranny. Merely. Fulfillment of the wishes. Of those who fought before us.”

The silence is long. Radio static. No answer. The three of them stare out the viewscreen at the planet below, something bright and blue and green and beautiful, and they've never seen so much color before in their lives, but-- no answer. No answer.

Sixes climbs up into the cockpit-- stares briefly out the viewscreen, too, eyes gone wide-- “Is--?”

The three of them shush her. She looks at their faces and nods, hands clenched tight into fists.

“ _Cleared for landing, shuttle. Proceed to the hangar bay.”_

Seveno makes a choked sound and slams off the comm system before any of them can answer.

Two-Sevens sags. “...How do we land?”

“Same way we took off, I think. But backwards.”

“Came up to check what was happening,” Sixes says, looking back to the planet again. “Do we strap in?”

“Probably,” Two-Sevens answers. “Em-Kay?”

“Alive.” Sixes shakes her head. “Not awake.”

“Okay.”

* * *

The ship lands. Leia stares at it like she can understand the situation through some hidden meaning in the hull plating or the glow of engines; it lands ungracefully, and the outside shows scorch marks of blasterfire.

An unidentified ship is always cause for concern. An unidentified ship that doesn't respond to multiple hails cause for more.

A ship that, when it finally answers, is spoken for by a _child_ , utterly terrified-- and the code that they gave, one obscure enough that Intelligence needed to scour back through their records to corroborate its validity. A code Leia _knew_ , and the agent it was supposed to be used by, and what made a dozen children so special that _that agent_ would risk breaking cover--?

 _Former cadets of the First Order, units PK-4766 through PK-4777._ Children. Young, terrified, _children_. And they had known, of course, heard the rumors of children snatched away from homes, _the faceless men who leave only ash in their wake_ \-- and Finn had told them as much, too, but knowing it and _knowing it_ are two different matters entirely.

She's almost glad that Luke wasn't in the room when the message came through, though he can likely feel her worry and will come to investigate soon enough. Children in slavery is one of the few things sure to draw out that rare, quiet fury within him.

The ship lands, shakily, sloppily, and she wonders how twelve children managed to break free by themselves. What the First Order shaped them in to so they even had the skills to do so.

The boarding ramp lowers.

One helmet – adult-sized, oddly enough – and one blaster clatter out, roll and slide to the ground. The soldiers whom Leia is required to bring with her raise their weapons slightly, but she gestures them back with a wave of her hand. Then a quiet noise, and a little boy no more than six or seven shuffling out, gray-faced, hands up with the fingers spread apart.

“I am,” he says in a voice high and clear and shaking. But it's the voice of a child; it carries. Leia feels her battered heart rip in two all over again. It isn't the first time, but the pain is no easier to bear. “I am tw-- I am PK-4772.”

Other leaders in the Resistance want the occupants of the ship to sit down for questioning. Leia understand that the children of the First Order are not children in truth, that they _are_ soldiers, no matter their age, but--

But they are children. And the _code_...

She walks forward, gesturing the soldiers back a second time, and stops a short distance away. The child looks more scared the closer she gets, and though she wants nothing more than to kneel down in front so that they are eye level, to talk in comforting words she thinks she remembers how to form, she knows it will do little to help.

“Hello, PK-4772,” she says gently, treating the designation as a name even as it leaves a foul taste on her tongue. “My name is Leia. There are twelve of you, right?”

“...Yes,” he finally answers. “And our. Our. MK-2942. In charge of our training. Or, she was. She was injured in our escape. But we heard. We heard that Finn who was FN-2187, who was a Trooper, he came _here_. And you let him. And we had hoped. And the stranger told us how to find you, and gave us the code...”

He speaks in fragments, short, halting, and still he shakes. Leia tries to muster up a calming smile, and doesn't think she succeeds.

“Your CO will be taken care of, I promise you that. And the twelve of you will be given rooms to stay in. Finn _is_ here, he _did_ come to the Resistance just like you were told. We didn't turn him away, and we won't turn you away, either. You were... you were very, very brave in coming here, child.”

The boy blinks at her once, twice, then-- then snaps up into a perfect salute with perfect posture, turns, and calls:

“File out!”

Two rows, one of four and one of five, and the four line up behind him while the five line up next to them. Two straight, perfect rows of children, all in black. Wide-eyed and frightened. So frightened. She can feel it in the buzz of the Force around her, can practically taste it in the air. Can feel Luke's presence starting to move toward her.

“Pop-- PK-4771 is with PK-4773 and MK-2942,” one of them says to the boy, and the boy nods, and looks back to Leia, uncertain.

“We'll take care of her,” she promises again, trying to put as much weight as she can into the words, and the children-- they don't relax, but they nod, and the medteam rushes out within minutes to take MK-2942 away while the twelve follow in another direction, and Luke rests a comforting hand on her shoulder, sorrow etched into every line of his face.

“Their CO?” he asks, looking from the children to the departing medteam, and Leia can only shrug in helplessness.

“Another child. Seventeen, maybe. And so much blood.”

Three of the children had been stained with it, covering their hands, their sleeves.

“Send Finn to talk with them.”

“I'm going to. Luke. They...”

“I know,” he says.

There isn't much else to say.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight communications issues abound.

There are twelve of them alone in a little room in the base, waiting for people who are higher up in command than they are to decide what should be done with them-- but the Resistance has taken Em-Kay to Medical.

The Resistance has taken Em-Kay to Medical.

Pop is curled up in Doubles' arms, and everyone is pretending that she isn't sobbing, and Kay has gone a strange shade of blue-gray, and Sev is shaking and Sixate is either going to throw up or pass out, and his hands and his clothes are still red with blood--

“Hey-- hey, hey, there...”

The voice is quiet, and eleven pairs of eyes snap to the door. Pop's cries go abruptly silent, her face still turned away.

The owner of the voice is tall, older than Em-Kay, but not by a lot, and his skin is dark, and he's wearing the standard grays that they've seen other people wearing and a battered pilot's jacket with insignias and patches across the sleeves, and he's smiling at them, smiling _openly_ \-- but it turns sad, when he actually sees them, clustered there.

They're scared, and they know it, and they know they look it. Delta has Em-Kay's blaster, snatched up when they passed by as they left the ship and no one stopped him, but he can hardly lift it.

They don't know who he is. They don't trust him.

The Resistance took Em-Kay to Medical.

_The Resistance took Em-Kay to Medical._

Seveno sticks out his chin in the best show of defiance he can muster, hands shaking, eyes wide and wet. “Where's--?”

But his voice cracks, and he doesn't get any further.

“Your Cadet leader got hurt getting you out of there, right?” The man crouches down so he's closer to their height. His voice is still quiet. “I bet you're all real worried.”

Peekay makes a strangled kind of sound.

Of course they are-- of course they are, _of course they are_ , and he says to their faces that--

Is the Resistance really no different than the First Order?

“They took her to Medical,” Doubles spits at him, curling as much around Pop as she can. “You took her to Medical. She told us we were _safe_ here--”

In her arms, Pop twitches, still silent, and she shuts her mouth.

The man blinks, and then his mouth opens, and his eyes go wide, wide open-- “Oh-- no, no, _no--_ Force, no, it's not like that here. Medical, here-- they treat everyone like they did the Officers. Your Cadet leader, she's there so they can help her heal.”

“Heal,” Niner repeats, sounding the word out slowly, eyes narrowed.

“Yeah. I know it's hard to believe, I didn't believe them either. It's true, though, I promise-- look, they sent me here to get your names, ask you how you got here, but let's get you cleaned up, get you all some food to eat, and then I'll take you down to talk with the doctors taking care of her, okay?”

“Food,” Niner repeats again, eyes still narrowed, and a few of them shudder at the mention of doctors.

“ _Either_ ,” Two-Sevens says, more emphatically, and squints at him. “You're-- like us? Got out?”

“Yeah.” The man nods, smiles a bit. “My name's Finn, but they used to call me FN-2187. Got badly hurt trying to get out of the First Order, same as your Cadet leader-- I was comatose, know what that means? Hurt so bad I couldn't even wake up. And they kept me alive until I could wake up, and then they helped me get back to normal. She's gonna be fine, I promise.”

It's like a current runs through the room all at once-- _they used to call me FN-2187_.

“FN-2187,” Kay whispers, eyes wide. “FN-2187 who is Finn who was a Trooper who was just like us.”

Finn looks-- a little uncomfortable, at that, but nods anyway. “That's me.”

“Food,” Niner says again, and shuffles forward a couple of steps. “...Please?”

They hold their breath. Asking for things is-- was-- _discouraged_. But this is not the First Order. And the man is Finn who was FN-2187.

Finn's smile gets bigger. “Yeah, I'll show you where the mess hall is, and we can talk about how you got here if you want.”

So they step into two single-file lines, because that's the only way they've ever known how to walk, and march in lockstep alongside Finn who was FN-2187 who was a Trooper just like them. Pop tails the one on the left, standing behind Doubles, one green hand curled around her wrist. The tears on her cheeks have not yet dried. Finn who was FN-2187 shows them a place where Sixes and and Pop and Sixate can wash the red from their skin.

The mess hall is mostly empty, wide and spacious and full of tables and benches. Finn who was FN-2187 who was a Trooper just like them keeps offering them smiles and glancing over periodically to make sure they're still following-- says, once, that they don't have to march, but the idea of _deliberately_ walking out of step just feels... strange. Wrong.

“Hey, L'ara,” says Finn who was FN-2187. There is an alien counting out ration bars behind a counter. “Anything left from dinner?”

The alien looks up. Her expression does something funny when she sees the Cadets behind Finn who was FN-2817, but it is not an expression they have ever seen on the face of an Officer, and they do not have words for it. “Oh,” she says first, and then, “Yes-- yes, there is, let me just-- oh. Oh.”

Finn who was FN-2187 settles them all at a table, not long enough for them to sit the way that they have been raised to sit. Four of them take one side, and four take another, and four take another, and four take the last, and Finn who was FN-2187 and the alien L'ara bring trays of food over for them. Finn who was FN-2187 tells them that they can eat however much they want, though he understands if they're worried about their CL and don't have much appetite.

“Not our CL,” says Pop, still clutching tight to Double's hand.

“No more Officers,” Doubles says with a hesitant nod and a glance up to Finn who was FN-2187, to see if he dares to agree with such a drastic statement, but he just smiles at them and nods with more confidence than they have ever seen in a Trooper.

“That's right,” he tells them. Then, “Well, there's officers in the Resistance, but it's not like it is in the First Order. Everyone's treated the same. Who'd you say she was, the Junior Trooper? MK-2942?”

“Yes,” Sevens nods.

“But her name is Em-Kay,” Two-Sevens tells him, because names are important.

Niner, wary, speaks up. None of them have yet touched their food. “We know that shortened designations are not allowed by the First Order, but we are not Cadets, and Em-Kay is not a Junior Trooper. And you are Finn who was FN-2187. And she calls herself Em-Kay. It is her name. An Officer told us to stop using _names_.”

Finn who was FN-2187 smiles at them again, a little wider. “You all picked names for yourself?”

“...Yes?” says Kay, and this is not the First Order, and they are no longer Cadets, but a question is a question and they are supposed to speak when spoken to or ordered to speak.

“That's great,” says Finn who was FN-2187. He sounds like he means it.

_You are to cease using these names. It is an order from an Officer._

“What're your names? Gotta have something to call you by.”

_You are to cease using these names._

There is a pause. They look at one another. Finn who was FN-2187 who was a Trooper just like them has a name, and this is not the First Order.

They count off, name by name by name. Finn who was FN-2187 who was a Trooper just like them nods with each one, and then when they have finished, repeats them back to make sure he has them memorized. They do not doubt that he will remember their names. Troopers are supposed to have good memories. They are reconditioned if they do not.

“All right,” he says, gentle, easy, still smiling. He smiles more than anyone they have yet to meet, far more than any of the Officers ever did. “Here, eat something. All of this is pretty bland, but I figure you aren't used to much substance, same as I was.”

 _Here, eat something_ is a little bit like an order, and while they no longer have to follow orders, there is something familiar about it, and they eat. When the trays are cleared and Pops has relaxed her grip on Doubles' wrist and Two-Sevens has even smiled a little bit, Finn who was FN-2187 walks with them through the base. They march in lockstep behind him. They do not realize they are in Medical until they see a med droid bustling about a wide yet cluttered room, and then Pops clings to Doubles again and the rest of them go still.

“Excuse me,” Finn who was FN-2817 says to the med droid, which stops to look at him. “The girl that was brought in-- blood loss, blaster wound-- is she still in surgery?”

“Yes,” says the droid in a tinny voice. Kay's brow furrows. Peekay mouths _surgery_ to himself. “The patient entered surgery 1.34 hours ago. It is estimated the surgery will complete in 2.16 hours. Do you or the children require medical attention?”

Sixate can't stifle a whimper. Finn who was FN-2187 glances briefly over his shoulder. “No, thanks, Two-Onebee. If you could send someone to notify me or Poe or Rey when she's awake?”

“Of course, sir,” says the droid.

Finn who was FN-2187 takes them out of Medical, which is nothing like Pop remembers it being, and she thinks this must be a good thing, that the Resistance and Finn who was FN-2187 is telling them the _truth_ , and he takes them back to the hallway where they have been assigned quarters and tells them that he'll be at the room at the far end, where the hallway meets up with another one, and he or anyone else in his room is someone that they can trust and come to if they need anything. Peekay nods. Finn who was FN-2187 leaves. They feel a little better now, knowing that Em-Kay will be okay soon, if she's being treated like an _Officer._

They look at the rooms, six of them, all in a row. Doubles takes Pop with her. They split off into pairs. The Resistance has said that they sleep two to a room, now.


	13. Chapter 13

“Em-Kay, Peekay, Sev, Sixate, Niner, Seveno, Pop, Two-Sevens, Delta, Doubles, Kay, Sixes, and Sevens,” Finn lists off, and he doesn't let any of his resignation show when he only finds pity and non-comprehension in the faces of Resistance Intelligence. Only Skywalker-- Rey's parents Skywalker, that is-- seem to understand something of it, but they're both impossible for anyone to get a read on, much less _Finn._

“Their names,” Leia – _call me Leia_ , says Leia Organa to him one day, a general, a princess, a _hero_ , Finn still can't quite believe it – says with next to no hesitation betraying her... something. Her _something_. There _is_ an emotion there, and Finn isn't bad with emotions, but he spent all of his waking hours from the age of thirteen on behind a helmet and learning emotional cues from Officers. Of course, the First Order couldn't censor everything once Troopers moved out of training, and he's never been stupid like so many people seem to think. Confused, dealing with culture shock, but he knows about joy and laughter and sadness and sex and love-- he just never thought that any of it could apply to himself. Troopers are not Officers are not people.

“Yes, ma'am,” he replies.

He's in a room full of Officers-- hell, he _is_ an Officer, now. Lieutenant. One rank below Captain-- Phasma who was PH-2762. And he has to explain to a room full of Officers the process undertaken by the First Order to shape children into tools. Explain to a room full of people in power what it is to be a non-person and accept that.

Can that even be explained?

Hell.

He wishes Rey and Poe were here. Neither of them have clearance. They're guarding the kids instead.

“Those are numbers and letters,” comes the inevitable response, from someone whose name he isn't quite sure of, a face he doesn't recognize. He doesn't interact very much with Resistance Intelligence or Command.

“Those are _names_ ,” he shoots back. Even now, disagreeing with an Officer makes him almost-nervous-- but there's something liberating about it, too. That same feeling when Phasma who was PH-2762 was at gunpoint, and _he_ made her lower the shields to Starkiller Base. “They picked them.”

“Well, they're children,” says the same man, “and... sheltered, shall we say, at that. They don't--”

“Those are their names.”

The words come from Skywalker, of all people. He's a quiet man, unassuming, dressed in grays and browns, gray-haired and tired, and overall unobtrusive. Finn wouldn't put him as _Jedi Master Luke Skywalker_ if he didn't already know the man by sight. His words are quiet, too, but they cut across the room in such a way that makes everyone go silent; he and Leia are very much alike, in that respect. They simply exist in a way that commands attention, despite all appearances to the contrary.

Finn looks at him in surprise.

“Those are their names,” Skywalker repeats, sounding tired. “When you have nothing... a name is the only thing you can control. A name can't be taken away, and those are the ones that they chose. Surely you have more important things to discuss than overriding a child's decisions?”

That's... well. There's a story there, Finn thinks. And not a story Skywalker seems keen on sharing. He just looks calmly at the man until the man settles back in his seat, flushed, and Leia clears her throat to bring the meeting back on track.

“Their names,” she says again, nodding, and that's the end of that. “What else did they tell you?”

 _Nothing,_ Finn wants to say, because he wasn't going to start questioning the Cadets not even old enough to be out of primaries while their CL's blood was still staining their clothes, and they hadn't eaten in Force-knows how long. He got them cleaned up, and he gave them food, and he showed them the places they were supposed to sleep, though he fully expects them to be piled into one room by the time he gets back. Before coming here, he'd never slept in a bunkroom holding fewer than fifteen. Cadet groupings had been larger, when he'd been placed there.

“They're a standard Cadet group,” he says. “Almost at the end of their first year of training. Tired and confused. Worried about Em-Kay.”

“Em-Kay being their commanding officer?” Leia prompts.

Troopers are not Officers are not people.

“Cadet leader,” Finn corrects, shuffling on his feet, “but. Yeah. Essentially. And.”

_You took her to Medical, she told us we were **safe** here--_

“Look, I dunno who said to them that Em-Kay was being taken to medical for surgery. That's not important. But there's a lot of stuff that means something to them, and means something entirely different everywhere else, and that's gonna need to be explained. Like _medical_.”

“What other meanings would medical have for a stormtrooper?” asks Jade. _Do **not** call me ma'am, or Mrs. Skywalker. Mara, Finn._ Mara Jade was an intimidating woman, and _Mara_ was too... odd. Stranger than calling Leia _Leia_ , even. Jade was the compromise they had settled on. They sit in silence sometimes, in the mornings, when Finn finds himself unable to sleep.

He's glad she's the one who spoke up, because he can see several others about to ask much the same, but likely in ways that would be rude or equally insensitive. He's doing his best to explain, he _is._

“Officers and designated personnel get medical attention when needed,” he explains. There's a buzzing in the back of his mind, distant memories of conditioning, _re_ conditioning witnessed through the rest of his squad. Most of the initial conditioning he's forgotten or blocked out, it was so long ago, but he's seen fellow Troopers leave Medical and come back glassy-eyed, forgetful, when the procedures went wrong -- and with all their former self, such as it was, wiped away when the procedures succeeded. “Medical for Troopers is where reconditionings are done. Decommissionings, too, if the infraction is severe enough.”

There's a pause.

“Reconditioning being...” Leia says, almost like she doesn't want to know the answer. Finn doesn't blame her. He doesn't want to know about reconditionings, either.

“Change how you think, ma'am. Change how you act. Make sure any unwanted behaviors or mannerisms are... no longer there. And decommissionings are, uh. Self-explanatory.”

“But they're children,” says someone, and Finn has to shake his head.

“They were Cadets in the First Order. And a lot of Cadets get sent to Medical before they ever make it out of training, and they don't always come back.”

The non-comprehension has faded away in some faces, replaced with... more pity, primarily. But there's horror in a few expressions that lets Finn know he's managed to get _something_ across. He resists the urge to shuffle his feet more and makes himself keep holding eye contact.

“When their... cadet leader?” one of the intelligence officers begins, stumbling over the term. Finn nods, once; the woman continues. “When their cadet leader is out of recovery, we have questions for her as well. To avoid further miscommunication, would you be willing to sit in?”

Finn was planning on insisting if they told him he couldn't, so.

“Of course, ma'am.”

There are more questions, and not as much to tell, because Finn never asked anything of the Cadets – what made you leave, why, _how_ – and the Resistance is asking the wrong questions for him to try and explain any more of the First Order. There's too much of it to just sit down and _explain_ , an entire world and culture-- he wants to talk about being friends with Slip, he has to explain how training worked, and glove-to-glove contact, all the things forbidden and not, the rules within a unit. He wants to talk about the training process for Cadets, there's explaining the stages, the lessons within the stages, the tests and the looming threat of Medical, the propaganda, the brainwashing he still finds himself thinking of as truth before he can catch himself-- there's _too much_.

He's exhausted when he leaves, mentally, physically, but he stops briefly into the Resistance medbay (Em-Kay is out of surgery, resting, likely going to be asleep until the morning) before doubling back to the Cadets' hallway. There are voices coming from one room; the rest are empty, as expected.

Poe and Rey let him crawl into the bed between them when he finally gets back, his face smooshed against Poe's shoulder, and Rey just kind of drapes herself over the two of them like she does sometimes.

“Want to talk about it?” Poe asks hesitantly. Finn sighs, mumbles something that's supposed to be a _no_ but only comes out as a string of noises muffled by skin and fabric. They seem to get it anyway.

“When I was...” Rey pauses for a moment, shifts a bit until she finds a more comfortable position. More comfortable for her means that Finn is now more of a Finn-sandwich, but he doesn't mind very much. “When I was a kid. Grandpa taught me how to fix things, yeah? Taught me everything. And he'd tell me stories while I was working, it was like he never ran out of them. I started understanding them more, though, older I got. Stories about pranks and runaways became trickster gods out-thwarting the slave masters, and escaped slaves on the freedom trail.”

Her voice is soft, quiet. Finn wonders if she finds herself back on Jakku, some nights, a little lonely girl in a rusting Imperial Walker, the same way he's still a little lonely boy in a bunkroom of fifteen.

Skywalker's words in the briefing room make a little bit more sense, now.

“And I don't think I ever fully understood all of them. 'Cause Jakku was. It was terrible, even if it was home. But I was freeborn. So was Papa, and Grandma. But not Grandpa. And all of us still have that name-- it's a slave name, on Tatooine, did you know that? The stuff of legends out of its opposite. And... And what I think I'm trying to get at, is. They might never understand a lot of what you tell them. Or any of it. They _can't_ understand, 'cause they haven't lived it. But it's still important that people know. I'm. Am I making sense?”

“Thinking about the same,” Finn agrees, putting in enough effort to turn his head so that they can actually hear him.

“They're gonna be all right,” Poe says; Finn can hear his breathing underneath him, feel his heart beat in his chest. Steady, unceasing. A constant.

They won't be _all right_ \-- no one under the First Order can ever truly be all right. But they're young. Only just starting to form permanent memories in their heads, that's why primaries start when they do. Cadets will remember the Order and nothing but; the Order is their life; they are nothing without the Order. They don't have twenty years of conditioning and reconditioning crammed into their heads, twenty years of propaganda and indoctrination. They'll need to adjust, but they _will_ be able to. Finn could. They can.

“Yeah,” Finn sighs, and lets his head drop back down. “Yeah, they will.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioning it again because we're back to the POV of the kids, but here's the character list for _i, rebel_ in case anyone is ever confused.
> 
> http://floraobsidian.tumblr.com/post/155052111872/i-rebel-character-list

They have been given their own rooms, down in a quieter end of the base, and Finn who was FN-2187 is with his two friends at the end of the hall if they need anything. They have space to themselves. The Resistance has said they sleep two to a room.

It is less than a standard hour before Two-Sevens' door cracks open, and Doubles peers through the gap, Kay and Sixes and Sevens behind her.

“Peekay and Sixate got a big room, so we're all moving in there,” she says in a whisper.

The beds are bolted to the wall, but he takes a blanket and a pair of the socks that Finn who was FN-2187 gave him and shuffles out, and the twelve of them all move into a single space.

He likes having them near him. The First Order is bad, that's what Em-Kay told them, but he thinks even that's okay, because he has his other Cadets and he has Em-Kay, and he has them _because_ of the First Order.

The Resistance has said they sleep two to a room, but they have already rebelled against the First Order, and the Resistance also seems less likely to recondition them for infractions. Finn who was FN-2187 says there are _no_ reconditions, which they find implausible, but sleeping twelve to a room instead of two does not feel drastically wrong. The beds are much bigger than their bunks in the First Order. They crawl up into the same one and rest in a pile, for contact is not permitted beyond glove-to-glove at every stage beyond primaries, but they are no longer in training to be Troopers, and they never finished primaries. The closeness is... good.

Pop yawns and wraps a blanket more tightly around herself. “I want to scout.”

“Can't scout without a superior officer,” Delta answers.

“Finn who was FN-2187 is down the hallway,” Sev says, but Niner shakes his head.

“He's not a Trooper. _We're_ not Troopers. Don't have a superior officer.”

There's a pause that stretches out into a longer silence, and they ponder over those words for a while. Two-Sevens thinks. Everyone has a superior officer. Who is there to tell them what to do, then, with no superior officers?

“Does that mean we can't ever scout again?” Seveno asks, sounding almost disappointed. Two-Sevens agrees. “I liked that. Got to explore.”

“Nooo....” Niner shakes his head again, more emphatically. “Means we can scout _without_ a superior officer.”

Two-Sevens thinks about this, too. No superior officers.

They make their own choices...?

“Let's scout for Em-Kay!” Pop sits bolt upright, eyes wide. Doubles watches her, and Two-Sevens watches them both; they are all scared, even more without Em-Kay at their sides, but Pop saw Em-Kay shot. Pop was in _Medical._ Troopers in Medical don't come out the same. “Finn who was FN-2187 will be proud when he finds out we already know how to get there.”

“Troopers don't feel--”

“But we _aren't_. Neither is he!”

“--no superior officers?”

“ _No superior officers_.”

“Shh!”

Everyone turns to look at Peekay, who really isn't any older than the rest of them, but he had the lowest serial number of them all, so he's the one who has to step up when Em-Kay isn't there. He climbs up to stand on the bunk, so he can see all of them, and all of them can see him.

“We're gonna scout for Em-Kay, but we have to be _quiet_. Socks, no shoes, so there's no noise.”

They look at each other. Two-Sevens finds himself nodding. All twelve of them are.

And so they make the first group decision of their newly-found freedom and sneak out of their quarters, and down the hall, and past the room where Finn who was FN-2187 is staying – they can hear him talking, and laughter of some others, so they don't even really _need_ to be quiet – into the larger, main area of the base.

It's nighttime, for the Resistance, which means there are still people but not as many as there are in the day. Like how Em-Kay had explained patrols in the nighttime shifts; the Officers and designated personnel are sleeping, and there are only guards about. They walk on padded feet, following the path they had memorized from Medical to their quarters but in reverse, and none of them mention that they are scared. Walking into Medical is the path to reconditioning, even if it isn't, here.

But Em-Kay did exactly that to rescue Pop before she got them out, and they follow Em-Kay.

Medical is quiet. There are no droids and no doctors except for a woman in a white coat. They are not expecting the woman in the white coat. The woman in the white coat is not expecting them; she turns at the sound of the door sliding open, though they themselves have made no noise, and they freeze in lockstep, two rows of six.

“Are you _supposed_ to be in here?” asks the woman in the white coat, and Doubles twitches, and Pop shoves her way to the front with her fists bunched at her sides.

They are done. They have left. They want to see Em-Kay.

“Don't _have_ a superior officer,” she says, and her voice doesn't even shake. “No more orders.”

“No more orders,” the rest of them echo, hearing Em-Kay's words in their mind, and Peekay follows a heartbeat later, the furthest out of sync that they've ever been--

“No more Order.”

The woman in the white coat blinks, and then blinks several times, and something goes strange in her expression. It's not a look that they've ever seen on an Officer's face, or even on Em-Kay's, so none of them can understand what it means.

“She's this way,” the woman in the white coat said, her voice sounding oddly thin, and she leads them deeper into Medical, and they pretend not to be frightened, and she leads them into a little room where Em-Kay is resting on a bed, propped up at an angle with pillows, her eyes shut, a kind of mask over the lower part of her face and the gentle whir of machinery around her. A med droid hums off to one side, poking at readouts on a datapad.

“I'll get Emtee to bring in some pillows and blankets for you, okay?” says the woman in the white coat, her smile a little bit crooked. The med droid puts down the datapad and drifts out-- Emtee, perhaps. “You can stay the night as long as you aren't loud.”

“We'll be quiet,” Two-Sevens says instantly. Anything to get them to stay.

“Very, very quiet,” Delta agrees.

The woman in the white coat leaves, and Emtee comes back in with spindly durasteel arms full of soft things for them to curl up around and leaves, and the twelve of them stand around looking at Em-Kay's bed with Em-Kay in it, and not a one of them moves.

“...Guard cycle.”

Sixate looks at Seveno, who had spoken in a mumble. “Guard cycle?”

“Need to watch Em-Kay _and_ need to sleep. Guard cycle.”

There is a pause. Peekay looks at the group, at Em-Kay.

“Routine begins at 0500 hours,” he says. “And it is...”

“2307 hours,” says Delta. “Passed a chrono.”

“So there are six hours. Six of us guard for three, then six more.”

“Optimal rest cycle,” Doubles agrees.

Six of them sleep on the floor with the pillows and blankets the droid brought to them. Six of them stand, four along the side of the bed, one at the head, one at the foot. They wait.

Em-Kay sleeps.

* * *

Kalonia makes the report to the General as soon as she turns to find the children shuffling into her medbay, more silent than any group of children have the right to be, more solemn, serious. Leia, an old friend of hers, sighs and shakes her head and tells her to keep an eye on them, but not to try and take them away.

“I wasn't planning on it,” Kalonia tells her with eyebrows raised. “Hells, no. Just figured you should know where they were when Dameron and his crew started acting frantic because they lost a dozen kids.”

“Lost?” Leia repeats.

“There's no way Finn let them go off by themselves.”

“A valid point.”

Kalonia returns to the medbay and peeks in on the children. Six are sleeping in a row like corpses on the floor.

* * *

When she wakes, it is slow in coming. All of her insides feel numb, and there is pressure on her legs, and something cool pressed over her face.

She can't be in the First Order, then. If she was in the First Order, she would be dead.

They do not keep traitors alive, even to make examples of them.

The light is dim outside her eyes, when she manages to open them, and everything is blurry. The air is cool. Her lips underneath the thing on her face feel dry. She blinks. A ceiling, and the hum of machinery. Not the ship they stole; its medbay was rudimentary at best.

Another blink, and another. It _is_ a medbay, it must be. An Officer's medbay. Medical for Troopers is something else entirely.

Did her Cadets lie? Give her rank? Troopers do not have rank, and she had been wearing her armor.

But her Cadets-- her Cadets are _here_. The weight on her legs shifts with slow breathing, and she can see blankets on the floor if she turns her head, and little blurry figures standing guard, facing the door.

She smiles. Closes her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> College is doing its best to kill me, but hey. I still got my writing.
> 
> As always, thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. For more writerly ramblings come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	15. Chapter 15

They are drowsy when they wake one another up at 0500 hours. This is when routine is supposed to start, and they know that they must be awake, their beds made, their uniform blacks neat.

But they are not in the First Order anymore, and Peekay looks at the blankets on the floor and the dark of the room around them. At Em-Kay, awake a handful of times in the night, but never for very long. Blinks hard, gaze bleary.

“No superior officers,” he mumbles to himself. “Um.”

“ _No_ routine?” Doubles asks in disbelief, and they glance to one another. “Has to be a routine.”

“Should... find Finn?” Pop isn't even sitting upright, curled into a little ball by Em-Kay's feet. Her eyes are mostly shut, her words slurred. “Who was FN-2187?”

“ _Or_ ,” says Niner around a yawn. “Sleep.”

“But _routine_.”

“But _sleep_.”

Peekay looks at the blankets on the floor. At Em-Kay, drifting in and out of unconsciousness. Yawns so hard he nearly overbalances. “Still gotta guard...”

“You just did a shift,” Kay tells him. “Go to _sleep_.”

Peekay crawls into a pile of blankets and goes to sleep. Six of them stumble upright and murmur amongst themselves to stay awake, and six of them go back to their makeshift beds, and they guard.

* * *

Finn wakes up at the same time he usually wakes up. He's gotten better at learning how to fall _back_ asleep, and it's easier with Poe and Rey on either side of him in the bed, but he still always finds his eyes wide open between five and six in the morning. Habit, leftover from the First Order.

He considers going back to sleep for a few brief moments until he remembers the children down the hall. They're also going to be up around five, probably earlier, expecting some kind of routine, chores to do, set meals, or classtimes, or _something_. So he gets up instead, careful not to wake Poe or Rey in the process (Poe snores like a freighter engine; Rey is a notoriously light sleeper but also used to the noise, and as long as he doesn't jostle either of them too badly he doesn't need to worry), and gets dressed in efficient silence and slips out the door.

The kids' rooms are empty.

Finn sighs.

* * *

The medbay is the first place he looks, and the medbay is where they are, half of them passed out asleep on the floor in piles of blankets and pillows or squeezed onto Em-Kay's mattress with her, the other half swaying on their feet as they try to stay awake, keeping guard.

They're good, these ones. Finn can see why they all made it through primaries, against all odds-- they're smart enough to fly a ship by themselves, they're disciplined, they're loyal. Everything a good Cadet should be. And their lives are nothing like that any child should ever need to suffer through.

“Was wondering when you'd come looking for them,” Doctor Kalonia murmurs from behind him, too quiet for the kids to hear as he peers through the door, watching.

“Figured if they weren't in their rooms, they'd be here,” he murmurs back. “They wouldn't go anywhere without one another or a superior.”

“Hm,” is all she answers with, looking sad, and draws away. She runs the whole of Resistance medical; she has many things to attend to, even this early on in the morning.

Finn sighs again and steps into the room. The six standing guard straighten into a sloppy salute, wobbling a little, posture non-existent. He waves them down before they can pick up on it and worry about incurring a punishment, musters up a gentle smile. “Hey, there-- you've been on guard duty?”

“Rotating shifts,” says one of the girls. Delta, Finn remembers. “Are you here to start routine?”

“I'm here to tell you that you should all go to sleep,” he answers, seeing the way that they struggle to stay upright. He knows they _can_ run on three hours of sleep, or one hour, or no hours at all-- that's just standard training. But they shouldn't need to-- he should've been thinking further ahead, should have _known_ that they would try to find their Cadet Leader-- but it doesn't matter. They're here, now. “You've all done a good job, okay? But Em-Kay is safe, and you need your rest.”

Delta squints at him before yawning so widely that her jaw cracks. Pop shakes her head slowly. Sixes frowns-- pouts, really. They're  _children_.

“I'll stay here while you all sleep. And you don't need to leave the room, either.”

It works. The six look at one another, then at him, and then at Em-Kay. Within five minutes of joining the others on the mattress or on the floor, not a one of them is awake.

Finn scrubs his hands over his face.

He'll get them food from the mess hall later on, bring it back here. He doubts they're going to want to leave Em-Kay's side, especially once she wakes up. And he knows for a fact that, at some point, he's going to need to explain how the kids made their way halfway across base unaccompanied to General Organa (Leia, she said to call her _Leia_ ).

But that's for later. For now, he settles himself into a chair and waits.

* * *

Em-Kay wakes up. _Actually_ wakes up, she can feel it, this time. Everything is still hazy around her, and her insides are no longer numb enough to hide the fact that they _burn_ , but still numb enough to keep it from being unbearable, and there is still pressure on her legs. Something cool is still pressed over her face.

She breathes in, slow-- an oxygen mask? Turns her head to look around. Her Cadets are no longer standing guard, but there are still blankets on the floor, feet and hands and faces poking out from underneath. The light is brighter than it had been. Daytime? There is a stranger in the room.

There is a stranger in the room.

Her breathing picks up, and something starts to beep a little bit faster, which catches the man's attention, and the beeping only increases-- but he smiles, the stranger, and his voice is gentle.

“Hey,” he says, low and calm, “hey, it's okay. You and your Cadets are safe here.”

So they _are_ with the Resistance. She tries to lift her hand to push away the thing on her face, but her limbs don't want to cooperate-- looks at the stranger instead, trying to demand answers in her silence.

“My name's Finn,” says the stranger. _Finn who was FN-2187_ , thinks Em-Kay, and whatever is beeping too-quick starts to slow. Finn who was FN-2187 was _real_. And here, at the Resistance.

Just like they are.

“You're with the Resistance,” says Finn, because he doesn't know what she is thinking, because she cannot speak. “Your Cadets flew you here, landed the shuttle-- they're really protective of you.”

 _They're good Cadets_ , thinks Em-Kay, even though they are no longer Cadets, because this is the Resistance and not the First Order.

“You've been out since they brought you in; surgery lasted about three hours, just getting all the shrapnel out. Your armor shattered, when you were shot. And, because I know someone's gonna slip up-- there's things that mean different things in the Resistance than they do in the Order, okay? You're in an Officer's form of Medical, because everyone gets medical treatment on base, here. Someone's probably just going to call it Medical, because that's what it is to them-- but you _are_ safe here. No reconditioning, no decommissioning.”

Em-Kay blinks a couple of times at him.

 _She's in Medical_ \--

Her Cadets hadn't given her rank, this was just... for everybody?

 _No_ reconditioning?

“Your Cadets are gonna be safe, and so are you. The Resistance doesn't have child soldiers. I know it seems daunting, but you'll be able to do what you _want_ to do. No more fighting, no more dying.”

Everything they had trained for--?

She thinks for a moment about her Cadets becoming Troopers, just as they have been trained to do, and her brain so violently rejects the notion that she feels vaguely ill.

She nods.

Finn who was FN-2187 smiles at her again, gentle, kind. She's never known a Trooper who could be so openly kind. “Right now it's about eight-- um, around 0800 hours. There's no routine you need to worry about, no schedule. If you need anything, there's a button by your hand.” She twists to see it, ignoring the way the burning gets worse at the motion, and brushes her fingers against the little remote. “Press that, one of the medstaff will come in, okay? And I promised these guys I'd take over guard duty so they could sleep, so I'll just be over here.”

The conversation has already tired her out. Em-Kay isn't too sure if she likes that or not, but she trusts Finn who was FN-2187 just as much as she trusts her Cadets, and takes his word that they are, truly, safe.

She closes her eyes for a moment that stretches into another long nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "But _routine_ " / "But _sleep_ " accurately sums up every morning at college.
> 
> As always, thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!! Comments and kudos are much appreciated.
> 
> For more writerly things, come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Info about our First Order mole and a POV shift. It was fun writing a different perspective about the First Order, but after so long of writing Em-Kay's narrative, I kept messing up terminology.

“You aren't in trouble,” Leia says, though the young girl still looks petrified. “And whatever you tell us while you're here won't get you into trouble, either, do you understand?”

“Yes, ma'am,” she finally responds.

Em-Kay, according to the doctors, is very, very lucky. The lower half of her front armor plates had shattered, but none of the fragments hit any major organs or arteries; similarly, the blaster shot which shattered it went through and through, cauterizing instantly. The blood had only come from the injuries sustained by the armor meant to protect her.

Now, she sits heavily, and she is slow to stand. Her face is pale and hollowed. But she's alive, and she meets the gazes of General Organa and the Jedi Masters Skywalker and the assembled Resistance Command and Intelligence officers despite her obvious fear.

“Your stormtroopers gave a code when they responded to our hails,” Leia begins. The girl looks puzzled. “A phrase belonging to one of our high-ranking intelligence operatives, a mole so deep within the First Order that we don't even know their alternate identity, meant to signify that they required an extraction. How did you get into contact with them?”

Jania had been like a daughter to her, once, in the way that Dameron is something like a son to her-- like Ben still is, despite it all. (She thinks she understands how Luke could forgive Vader, at the end, though she still struggles with it all the same.) A Force-sensitive pulled out of a world the Empire had ravaged and ruined, one of a handful of survivors in her town. So bright, and brave. So quick to volunteer when she found out that the Resistance needed someone on the inside, that the First Order was far more of a threat than anyone had perceived it to be.

Leia can hardly remember her face, some days. Wonders what she looks like, now that she's grown.

The girl still looks puzzled. Those assembled begin to share glances; she sees Luke tilt his head ever so slightly to the side, trying to understand the obvious confusion lingering around the girl in the Force.

“...Cadets,” she finally answers, looking as though she's had a revelation. “We aren't. We were never troopers. My cadets were only in primaries-- um. Primaries, the first-- the first stage of training. I was selected to oversee their training because of high aptitude scores, with a number of others. But we were never troopers. Ma'am.”

Leia takes a moment to consider. The wording is very deliberate, a jargon she has never yet been introduced to; Finn is here, just in case of another miscommunication like the first, and he had explained something of what went on in the stormtrooper ranks, what the children had likely been through, but she's starting to see that there is far, far more than any of them had anticipated. An entire world and culture all to itself.

“Your cadets,” she allows. “Where did you and they hear that phrase?”

Em-Kay takes another slow breath, another long pause before answering. Her fingers are twitching very slightly on the arms of her chair. “I had not planned to come here. I. I knew we had to leave. At the end of primaries, cadets are being separated and shipped out for secondaries, and new cadets are being brought in to be processed. The base is always understaffed, and there are many many ships.”

Primaries, secondaries, _processed_. And Em-Kay seems far more at ease, now, beginning to treat it like a report to be given instead of an interrogation.

“There was also a base inspection. More officers present, but still more ships, and more oversights. Not many, but still more. So I wanted to leave then. But my cadets, are. Hm.” She pauses again, for a moment. “In the First Order. The officers. The officers get what is requested by them, always. And all worlds who have sworn allegiance to the First Order must serve the First Order in all ways. But the bastard children are not always found out in time. It is. Easier, to hide mistakes in the trooper ranks. And my cadets are bastards, and. Smart. Exceptionally smart. The other cadets do-- _did_ not like these things. I was not present at mealtimes because of the shortage of staff, and I was placed on guard duty, and my cadets were subject to more than they would have been if I had been there.”

Her words flow out in a matter-of-fact way, in a matter-of-fact tone, only stumbling a handful of times, and she never once averts her gaze-- would likely be standing at attention, if she could stand at all without collapsing. But Leia can feel herself reeling, disgusted by it all-- children, _their own children_ \--

There is muttering sweeping behind her as the Resistance processes. Luke has gone still, Mara's hand on his arm; their presence in the Force is like ice.

Em-Kay notices none of this and continues on.

“I do not. I do not know what specifically happened. There was not much time. But Pop angered an officer. Short-tempered man. Slated-- slated for-- decommissioning.” She goes paler still at the word, almost flinching as she says it. “Some of my bunkmates helped me to get out after curfew. I went to medical, the subdivision where-- where. And there was a stranger. The stranger gave me a keycard and a datachip. I do not know their name. I did not see their face. They gave me both and left.”

They have the datachip and the keycard in their possession. Resistance Intelligence has been analyzing them both for the past several days. Both are entirely clean, not even a fingerprint on the outside that doesn't belong to Em-Kay or her cadets; the only information on the keycard is a set of passcodes belonging to some middle-ranking officer of the First Order, an unimportant and balding man who likely isn't their mole. Stolen information, then. The datachip is even cleaner, with nothing but a set of unencrypted coordinates. Leia lets out a slow breath through her nose; Luke has the presence of mind to nod once, slight: a signal to show that the girl is telling the truth.

A dead end. Jania's updates are... infrequent, to say the least. Useful, always, but careful, that awful balance between preserving one's position and leaking the information one has access to at a high rank.

Sentenced for execution, all for making a man _angry_.

A _child_.

The Force stirs inside her, as it often does, furious and bitter. She lets it give her strength and keeps it locked away tight-- she is not her father's daughter. She refuses.

“I am. My apologies, ma'am, for not knowing more.”

“That's okay,” Leia is quick to reassure her. But they still have more questions to be answered. “What made you think that you _could_ leave? Why would you want to?”

There isn't any hesitation this time around.

“Finn who was FN-2187,” Em-Kay says like it's obvious. Finn startles where he sits. The muttering grows louder.

Em-Kay leans forward in her seat, sounding... eager? There's certainly more emotion in her eyes, her voice, her expression, than they've seen out of her or any of the other children thus far.

“Troopers are not people,” she says, still in that matter-of-fact way, sounding like she's reciting by rote. Likely, she is. But the expression on her face is something that could almost be a smile, if given time to grow. “Troopers and cadets are not officers are not people, and the First Order only cares about us as a unit, and what that unit can do. But there were officers talking about a trooper _by designation_. An officer-- a _general_ \-- made a fleet-wide announcement about a defector. A trooper who broke rank. That is. That is an effort put towards a _person._ But by their own admission, troopers are people. We are people. We are _people_.”

The muttering does not stop. Finn looks as though he's been struck, shocked; Luke, still holding to Mara's hand, cold like ice, seems... proud? The girl before her looks defiant for a brief, shining moment, and then it's gone, tucked away behind a mask that can't quite keep the fear from showing.

“How many others do you think share your thoughts about the Order?” she asks gently, and Em-Kay looks at her with wary eyes.

“My bunkmates helped me to get Pop out of medical the night we left. They chose names, too-- Jay, Ella, LJ. PF-3001 hadn't decided, yet. And the stranger you asked about, they said there were others. But. Likely, many. More than one would expect.”

* * *

Em-Kay is escorted out of the room by a middle-aged man and woman when the questions are finally over-- their hair is streaked through with gray, the man's a sandy brown while the woman's is a vibrant red Em-Kay has only ever seen on a First Order banner. She doesn't say this, though, because though it is the only comparison she has, she doesn't think the woman would appreciate it.

“Are you hungry?” the man asks gently. “Or thirsty at all?”

“Thirsty,” Em-Kay answers without thinking, because a question is still a prompt to speak, and good Cadets speak when spoken to or ordered to speak. But Cadets are not supposed to  _ask_ for things, and she scrambles for something to follow it with. “But I should return to my... kids...?”

They aren't Cadets anymore. They know nothing about being anything other than Cadets, but they are not with the First Order. Therefore, they are not Cadets. She doesn't know what to call them if they are not Cadets.

"We could get them, too, if you'd like," says the man, still gentle. "Bring them with us."

Neither of them say anything more. Em-Kay realizes that they are waiting on her to make a choice.  _Her_.

She has only been away from her Cadets (her kids?) for a standard hour or two. She has been away from them for longer before. She is tired from all the talking and wants to take a long nap, because that's something she can do, now. But she also wants a drink, her throat raw from speaking, and she wants to sit with her... with her kids.

"...I would like that," she answers, and the man smiles.

Tentatively, unsure, Em-Kay smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! Comments and kudos are much appreciated <3
> 
> For more writerly things, you can come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this in the wake of delirium following my successful completion of NaNo and now I am going to close every Word doc I have open and sleep for a week. I have been staring at words for so long it feels like they no longer exist.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed these kids learning how to be people <3

They've been told to draw.

Em-Kay doesn't understand it-- she's taught her kids how to read maps and schematics, but they don't start blocking out their own until late in training during secondaries, when they have the dexterity for it. Not that any of them are in primaries, or secondaries, not anymore. Here, in the Resistance, they have no structured kind of training or classes; they drift, and they learn about this strange new world, and Em-Kay recovers, and they answer questions about the Order, and they do what feels to them like nothing. They spend time with Finn and Poe and Rey – anyone who is trusted by Finn who was FN-2187 is trusted by them. They wander.

She asks the woman in the white coat in Resistance Medical (Kalonia, she knows, but Troopers do not call Officers by their names) when she can return even to light duty, and the woman in the white coat gets a strange expression on her face. Em-Kay still isn't very good at understanding those kinds of things.

“We'll find something for you to do,” says the woman in the white coat, and the next time Em-Kay goes back, she's told to draw, and her kids, also.

“Draw what?” Delta asks.

Em-Kay lets out a short puff of breath through her nose – this is something called _frustration_ – because she is just as confused. “I don't know.”

“Why are we drawing?” Peekay chimes in.

“I don't know,” Em-Kay says again.

She's been told it will help to focus them, and it will give them methods to express themselves, given that they do not have words for so many emotions, that they have been taught to hide such things-- she has been told that it will help to calm them down, too. A task, something to do with their hands on sleepless nights, when the emotions they do not have words for are too overwhelming.

Em-Kay does not know _what_ they are supposed to draw. It has a purpose, but no procedure. She does not understand.

A dozen faces share puzzled looks with her and with one another. These are Em-Kay's children, and she knows that she is supposed to look over them and guide them-- though this is furthest from what the First Order could have ever intended, it is what she knows, and what they know. Duty. And at the same time, she has no idea of what to do now. The ideas of personhood and _escape_ had seemed so alien to them and what they knew, that the conviction was real, but the goal felt like a dream. It still does, sometimes.

“...Scouting,” she says at last, thinking still of secondaries. Her kids are exceptional, Cadets or no; they can certainly start making maps if they try to. “We can draw schematics. Of the base, I mean.”

She knows how to do that much, and her kids scout anyway, with nothing else to occupy their time. No one seems to know what to do with them. Not even Finn who was FN-2187.

“Don't go past doors that are locked,” she adds before they can grow too excited, though she just wants to look at them grin forever and ever. There are no decommissionings or reconditionings here, but she doesn't want to know what will happen if step too far out of line. “Just remember they're locked and we can note it.”

* * *

They eat with Finn and his two friends and learn to ask questions, and sometimes they seek out one of the older pair who left with Em-Kay after the first round of questions to be asked – the man's name is Luke, she now knows, and the woman's, Mara. They don't seem to have rank; no one pays attention to either of them. If they are not Officers... well. She acquires flimsi and a number of styluses in different colors, and the maps that they come up with are crude, but complete. There are maps of the first floor and everything in different rooms, and there are maps of the duct system – Pop seems to like spending time up there, and no one has told her to stop, so Em-Kay allows it. Seveno wanders for an entire day outside with the goal of maybe starting to map that, too.

* * *

She goes to Finn who was FN-2187, later, thinking _he_ might at least understand. He does.

“People...” He frowns a little bit and stretches out on the grass. Em-Kay sits next to him and listens intently. “People make things because they're pretty, sometimes. Because those things look nice. Or they don't look nice, but people enjoy making things anyway. It's-- odd, I know. Art isn't much of a concept in the First Order.”

“Art,” Em-Kay repeats, thinking hard. “Like... holofilms?”

“Sure!” he agrees. “That can be art, I think. Though the stuff the Order puts out is propaganda, even the fictional ones. But people make holofilms for the sake of making them, too.”

“Did they tell you to draw?” she asks.

“Draw, or write, or do something.” He nods. “I was hurt worse than you were, and I was bedridden for a lot of the time I was recovering. They wanted me to have a way to get my thoughts out, so I didn't go crazy.”

“Expression,” she says.

“Yeah,” Finn who was FN-2187 agrees. “Expression.”

“...What is it?”

She still doesn't understand, not really.

Finn who was FN-2187 gets up and holds out his hand. Em-Kay takes it and follows him-- through the base that they have mapped out over and over again – her kids' first attempts were badly proportioned, no matter how many times they tried to figure out _which_ part was the wrong size – and all the way down to the room where Finn who is FN-2187 stays. There is a lot of clutter inside. Em-Kay thinks that an Officer wouldn't even know what to _do_ with that many infractions.

“That's Rey's,” he says, pointing to a thing of cloth sewn into the shape of a person, sitting on a shelf next to an old pilot's helmet. “Doesn't have a purpose to it, really. Something she had as a kid, as a toy, and she kept it because it meant something to her. And then over here--” He guides her to holos stuck to the wall, images of vibrant skies and towering trees and a little house in a field. “--these are of Yavin, where Poe used to live.”

“...Pretty,” she says slowly. “Make things... because they're pretty.”

“Yeah,” says Finn who was FN-2187, and he smiles.

* * *

She doesn't know what pretty things are, really, but she talks more with her kids. They keep scouting. They make better maps, because they can, because her kids are exceptional, Cadets or no.

(They still aren't very good maps; there is a reason they wait until secondaries to start such things, but they are _improving_ , and so Em-Kay is happy.)

And then one day, she walks with Pop and Sixes through one of the abandoned hangars towards the back of the base, the one where the windows are rusted shut and vines cover the hangar bay doors, and there are no freighters or fliers, only dirt and dust motes drifting through what light seeps in. They have been through before, because they have mapped out the whole base, by now, but there are always new things to find on scouting missions. Things are always, always changing, after all.

“Found buckets,” Pop shouts from the other side of the empty hangar, voice echoing, and Em-Kay hurries over. Her side only hurts a little bit with the exertion; good. She is getting better.

“Buckets?” Sixes asks.

“Buckets,” Pop nods emphatically, and holds one of them up. A silver canister almost as big around as her torso, nearly causing her to overbalance with the weight of it, and Em-Kay takes it from her before she can fall to wipe away the dirt on the side and read the lettering there.

“ _Blue_ ,” she says, and frowns a little bit. “Blue _what_ \-- oh. Blue paint.”

There is orange paint; yellow; green; brown; black. Em-Kay starts to think. She has an idea.

Ideas are very nice things to have, she knows now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also re: "no one seems to pay attention to either of them" and Luke and Mara -- what Em-Kay doesn't notice is that everyone is lowkey intimidated/in awe of the pair and don't approach them because of that. She's got the information, but the wrong conclusion.


	18. Chapter 18

Peekay has-- _had_. They are not Cadets. She is Em-Kay who _was_ MK-2942, past tense.

Peekay had the lowest serial number of all of her kids, and though they are all the same age, that makes him the “oldest” when Em-Kay isn't around. He is the leader when she is not or cannot be, and it is reflected in the way he tries his best to be serious, in the way he walks at the front of their group, putting on a brave face. She gives him the upper portion of her armor's chest plate, the part that hadn't shattered, and he covers it in brown and black and green.

Sev tied with Peekay for marksmanship in every sim that Em-Kay ever put them through, always quick to think but slow to act, taking careful, careful aim before firing. She takes both gauntlets and covers them in straight and narrow lines until no strip of white remains, alternating streaks of yellow and orange.

Em-Kay remembers none of this, unconscious at the time, but Sixate had pressed his tiny tiny hands to the bleeding, gaping wound in her side and held them there until the others could find what they needed in the shuttle's sparsely stocked medbay, red coating his fingers and his palms. He paints her gloves all black before dotting them with yellow, like stars in the night sky.

Niner is nervous, and always has been; Em-Kay never manages to break him of his habit of chewing on his lower lip, or tapping his fingers, or shaking his leg, but she doesn't think she needs to, now. She certainly doesn't _want_ to. Niner is also one of the bravest, she thinks – though her kids are _all_ brave, she knows that much, now that she has a word for it – standing up and demanding answers though such things have never been allowed to them before, even while his hands shake at his sides. He takes the left pauldron and smears a rainbow of color across it with his fingers, a chaotic and muddied mess. Em-Kay tells him that it looks wonderful, and he grins.

Seveno knows how to fly – he shouldn't by any means, their ship should have crashed, they should have died, all of them, but they _didn't_. Because she told them all that she wanted their scores to go up on the flight sims she put them through, and her kids are exceptional, and her kids did as ordered. He had to stand on a box just to reach some of the controls. He giggles a little bit as he covers what used to be Em-Kay's left boot in bright, bright yellow, and encourages Pop to take the right one. “And then we can _both_ be tall.”

Pop does take the right boot, turning it a mottled, messy green like the patterns on her skin. She sits next to Em-Kay all the while, and grins proudly when she's done, holding it up for Em-Kay to inspect. The paint has yet to dry, so when she puts it down, there are little hand prints on the side, around the ankle.

Two-Sevens scored highest on his aptitude tests, back when they were still required to take them. He thinks in a logical kind of way, and he paints a shaky and still inaccurately proportioned map across it, but Em-Kay manages to recognize it as the section of corridor that all of their rooms are in. The Resistance has said that they sleep two to a room, now, and Em-Kay even gets a room all to herself, but for the most part, they tend to pile into one of the largest and sleep in huddles. It's too empty, otherwise. She smiles a little more when she sees him look around at the colors the others have and starts to fill in the rooms correspondingly.

Delta is protective, something Em-Kay notices more and more. She's-- concerned, is maybe the word she wants? She's _concerned_ that one day, Delta is going to notice some of the comments that Em-Kay has managed to hide the worst of from her kids, at which point Delta is probably going to start a fight, no matter that she would only just be starting secondaries, and everyone else around them is very tall and very strong. She isn't very surprised when Delta takes the belt, then, with all of its packs and an empty holster for a blaster at the side. (Em-Kay had needed to turn over her blaster, _just in case_ , the Resistance had said, but she doesn't think that painting a blaster would be very good for it, anyway.) It turns into a multicolored thing, each segment painted a different shade, and then she grins a little bit to herself and loops it under one arm and over the opposite shoulder. Sev snickers next to her.

Doubles is protective, much like Delta, but Doubles is specifically protective over Pop. She sits next to Pop, one away from Em-Kay, and she splits blue and green and brown across the two pieces of armor which snap together to cover the left calf, and when she holds them up sideways, Em-Kay can see something like a sky and a forest below it, if she squints.

Her Cadets are exceptional, but none of them really know what they're doing, right now. Even if it is, maybe, _fun_.

Kay is one of the quieter ones in Em-Kay's group of kids, but the mix of colors that she throws together are possibly the brightest of everyone, covering both sides of the armor plates that would fit underneath the pauldrons and smiling when it's done.

Sixes was the first one to be named, and she's practiced and practiced and practiced her letters until she can cover her piece of armor in yellow and paint _S-I-X-E-S_ on top of it in blue in honor of that. Sixate, the one who named her, beams.

Sevens has the last piece of armor, the plating to cover the left thigh while Sixes has the plating for the right, and she doesn't seem to know what to do with it for a while. She lies down to think about it – Em-Kay watches her, not wanting her to be unhappy, but not knowing what _unhappy_ really means, yet – and then sits back up abruptly, turning around to pick a couple of the flowers scattered around them, tiny little yellow flowers that seem to be everywhere on this planet. Em-Kay's heard people complaining about them, something about invading? She isn't quite sure. But she watches as Sevens coats the white armor in green and dots flecks of yellow all across it, and she keeps on smiling.

And as for Em-Kay herself, she takes one of the styluses that's run out of ink and dips it into the canister of blue and drags the tip of it across the smooth and shiny surface of her helmet, not really caring what she puts down, only wanting for there to be _something_. When she finishes, she still isn't sure what she has, but Pop claps her hands together in delight.

It is warm outside. They sit in the sun for a long time, with paint-smeared skin and pieces of armor scattered around them, completely and thoroughly dismantled; her kids make up games to play, trying to see who can run the fastest from one end of the clearing to another, or who can climb the highest into one of the nearby trees with particularly low-hanging branches, and so on. Games are apparently just for fun in the Resistance, but she's watched Poe and Finn who was FN-2187 play games with cards, and she thinks they're secretly training for espionage. The point of it is to bluff and strategize, so there's nothing to indicate that she's _wrong_.

Em-Kay sets her helmet in her lap and runs her fingers across the blue lines now there, the paint dried. She thinks about LJ and Ella, PF-3001 and Jay, her bunkmates-- wonders if they're okay. Assuming her escape didn't bring down her bunkroom with her, they must have graduated out of training by now. Troopers, with armor like this.

She can hear her kids laughter drifting back to her, and she looks up, and she smiles again. It isn't a happy smile, though she didn't think that smiles could be anything but-- but she's smiling, because she _is_ happy, but also because she is sad. She misses the others. She hopes they're okay.

...Perhaps they will make it to the Resistance, too. Perhaps.

Perhaps.

* * *

Finn is crying when Rey finds him. For a moment she panics, such a sharp spike in the Force that she suddenly has Leia and her mother _and_ her father all prodding for her attention in the back of her mind, because that's a thing that people can do, with the Force-- but then she sees his smile. He's smiling. He's crying, but he's smiling.

_Rey, what is it? What's--?_

_I'm fine_ , she thinks quickly back, _Finn was crying, but he's happy. It's okay._

That leaves them with only more questions, but she blocks it out to take Finn's hand and squeeze gently, looking over at him. “Finn?” she asks.

Finn squeezes back and nods out the window. Rey looks out into the clearing between the Resistance base and the edge of the forests around it, and she sees the stormtrooper children all running around-- she can hear their laughter, too, very faint but there all the same.

“Oh,” she says on the exhale, and she laughs a little bit, too. Crying, and smiling. She understands.

“I've been keeping an eye on them,” he says, voice hoarse, though he doesn't really seem to care. “It got decided that they shouldn't have an official guard on them all the time, since-- since we wanted to try and emphasize the differences between here and the Order, and that wouldn't have helped. But-- I've just been keeping an eye out. They've been painting, Rey. Em-Kay's armor. Took it apart and started painting.”

As they watch, Em-Kay drops a blue-and-white helmet onto one of the kid's heads, where it falls comically to one side, much too large. Some of them are climbing... well, Rey supposes it would be distressingly high up in a tree for most people watching, but she's been climbing through crashed Star Destroyers since before she was a teenager, and Finn doesn't seem concerned.

“Where'd they get the paint...?”

“No idea,” he says, and they stand with hands clasped, watching, for a long time after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All y'all were really concerned about what the kids were going to do with the paint, and I'm just over here, planning fluff............
> 
> Anyway, this chapter is brought to you by the following Tumblr post, which I reblogged alllllll the way back in January with the knowledge that it would someday find it's way into this fic. And it did, kinda!
> 
> https://floraobsidian.tumblr.com/post/155600809977/ghostjetshell-hot-toys-star-wars-stormtrooper


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse at Em-Kay's bunkmates, followed by maybe a couple more chapters, and then we move to the next story.................

Jay is assigned to a _space station_ first thing out of training-- that _never_ happens to Troopers. Or, rather, it does, and Jay and the Troopers she bunks with are proof of that fact, but an assignment in _space_ is rare. Troopers do the work that Officers don't want to lower themselves to, the dirty jobs, the ground fighting. Troopers don't _get_ to work in space.

But she is a Trooper (sort of), and she is working on a space station. A _space station_. In _space_.

They have her working communications, which is even more rare, but something about her aptitude tests must have stood out to them. Or perhaps it was a mistaken assignment; the Order is still struggling in the wake of Starkiller's destruction by Finn who was FN-2187. Or perhaps it was deliberate; still struggling in the wake up Starkiller's destruction, there are too many posts to be filled and not enough personnel-- but plenty of Troopers. She records comm logs and monitors incoming and outgoing transmissions in a little booth with a half-dozen Troopers working alongside her and an Officer to oversee their work, and for the most part everything is quiet.

She misses Ella and LJ and PF-3001. She misses Em-Kay, still doesn't know if she and her Cadets made it out. She misses her own Cadets; two of them didn't make it out of primaries, but she almost thinks it's better that way. Primaries are easy. It's just a lot of testing, she knows. Failure further along is worse.

But she doesn't think about Ella or LJ or Em-Kay and her Cadets and whether or not they made it to the Resistance. She doesn't even think about Finn who was FN-2187 very often. She doesn't want to be distracted, because if she's distracted she'll be less efficient, and if she's less efficient then she's more likely to be reconditioned-- or decommissioned, even-- and if either of those things happen then her chances of _ever_ seeing Ella or LJ or Em-Kay and her Cadets sink drastically. The numbers aren't good as is-- Troopers spend time with their batches in primaries, the ones processed immediately before and after, but from then on out assignments are randomized with precise regularity. It prevents attachments.

And she and Ella and LJ and Em-Kay and PF-3001 all knew that they would likely never see each other again. But for a while, they knew that escaping the First Order was impossible-- and Finn who was FN-2187 seems to have managed well enough despite that. So she hopes, just a little bit, every now and again, and she doesn't get distracted until the blue people start showing up.

* * *

Ella and LJ are noted for their proficiency in training their Cadets – so much so that when primaries end, and with it, their last stage of training, they are kept on the same base in order to continue training incoming Cadets.

PF-3001, who never did manage to decide on a name, is transferred off base. They do not know where. Presumably, another base; Troopers are rarely assigned to space stations as their first posting, instead acting as guards or foot soldiers planetside. Jay is in a similar situation, stationed somewhere unknown, though she at least was told that she would be working in communications. Ella and LJ are lucky, because they know that bunkmates are hardly ever stationed in the same place again, and they know that one of the first lessons learned in the Trooper program is that no Trooper should ever grow attached to another for that very reason, and  _yet_.

Ella is worried. LJ is worried. The galaxy is very big, and they will likely never know what happened to PF-3001, or where Jay has gone. Neither of them cry about it, no matter if they want to.

They cannot talk, or interact, or even see one another very often. Their schedules do not allow time for such things-- and the scrutiny of Officers deflects all other opportunities, anyway. But they have new sets of Cadets to train, and that takes up all of the day, and that is important. That is good.

That is very good.

“You are here to learn,” Ella says to the room of Cadets, two rows of bunks, the beds perfectly made. Twelve of them stand at attention. “This is your first lesson.  _The First Order is wrong_.”

“Let me tell you a story,” LJ says to one of her new bunkmates in the brief ten-minute period they have in the 'freshers, where no Officer has ever entered and no Officer ever will. Ten minutes with far less risk of being overheard than anywhere else in the day. “It's a story about a Junior Trooper and her Cadets, and how an Officer told them they had names.”

* * *

In the training facilities of the First Order, Troopers outnumber the Officers five to one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're equal parts excited and terrified for TLJ clap your hands.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Just back from watching TLJ, and I'm dead inside, much like certain other people.
> 
> Here's a chapter for y'all.

The first time she sees a blue person is during a station inspection. Tension levels are high-- the station is evidently a stopping point for the _Finalizer_ on its current route, and that means there are _important people_ present. People like _Generals_ and _Lords_. People like _Captain Phasma_ who was PH-2762. And the last time that Jay was a part of a station inspection, Em-Kay and her Cadets ran.

Jay is terrified. Everyone on the base is terrified, to some extent, she can _tell_ , can feel it in the air-- but they say that Kylo Ren can do strange things. Like read minds. And Captain Phasma is only the _best_ of Troopers, the _perfect_ Trooper. Even if she can't do the things that Ren can do, she'll simply have to stand _near_ Jay, and she'll know about the way Jay thinks of things, the way she thinks of the Order-- or worse, how there are days when Jay struggles to think at all. It doesn't seem that implausible to her, not really, this is _Captain Phasma_ she has to consider.

She's terrified-- but it's okay, in the end. Kylo Ren never leaves the _Finalizer_ , just Officers and other personnel who have plenty of room on their starship to walk around but want to walk around somewhere else anyway, for reasons Jay can't decipher, and Captain Phasma conducts the station inspection but never makes it down to the communication levels, where things are dark and cramped and quiet. She leaves others to do that, and Jay works like she's supposed to and no one raises a fuss-- and it's not okay, because there's a blue man sitting cross-legged in the middle of the hallway and muffling a scream into his hands.

Jay startled and turns about to gape at him-- no one else has said a word, even though the strange blue man is being very loud. The station inspectors are standing just a half-meter away. The Officers-- don't notice? How can they not notice? There is a _blue man_. A transparent blue man. His edges are fuzzy, like he isn't fully-there.

Jay really, really hopes that she isn't hallucinating. Hallucinations are serious enough to warrant a visit to Medical, and she'd space herself before willingly making _that_ trip. Reconditioning was bad enough.

The blue man stops screaming after a few more moments, but continues to rest his head in his hands for a little longer. Then he straightens, and sighs wearily, runs his hands through his hair-- blue, like the rest of him. Everything is blue, his hair and eyes and clothes and skin. He looks... Jay doesn't have a word for it. It's certainly not an expression she's ever seen on an Officer's face.

And then the man is looking at her. Jay looks back at the man. The blue man. The blue man who had been sitting on the floor in a state of great distress, unnoticed by everyone else.

“Why were you screaming?” Jay whispers once the station inspectors have moved on, further down the row.

“ _Family drama,”_ says the blue man, sounding resigned. _“Got a name, kid?”_

“Jet,” says Jay, because her thoughts don't always work the way that they're supposed to, haven't since reconditioning. She thinks about being  _Jet_ instead of being  _Jay_ \- and in a sense, it doesn't really matter.  _Jet_ and  _Jay_ are both still names. She has a name. She has a  _name_.

She can be Jet, or Jay, or both. They're close enough to each other.

“ _Nice to meet you, Jet,”_ says the blue man, and then he's gone.

* * *

The second time that Jet sees a blue man, she's sitting in the mess hall and eating the designated portion of nutrient paste and water for midday meal. It isn't the same blue man as before, but a tired-looking blue man, shorter in height, longer hair tied back, a pair of goggles pushed up on top of his head. He's staring out the viewport at the barren planet below like it holds the answers to some impossible question-- so, so tired. Jet sneaks glances at him every so often, unwilling to stare in case someone notices her distraction, but unable to fully quash her concern.

She shouldn't be concerned. She is a Trooper now, and Troopers are not people, and Troopers do not _feel_. But, she is only sort of a Trooper. A real Trooper wouldn't be waiting for her chance to run, waiting to see traitor friends again, if only just once more. And they have names, and only people have names. Troopers are not Officers are not people.

“Why are you sad?” she whispers to her tray in order to hide the fact that she is speaking to a blue man who may or may not be there, but there is no answer, and when he looks up, the man, like the one before him, is gone.

* * *

For a long time, Jet only ever sees the second blue man, though the second blue man never hears her-- just lingers at viewports and stares sadly down at the planet which they orbit, weariness in his posture and bitterness in his eyes. Then the first blue man shows up while Jet is transferring comm logs for yet another shift, sitting on the desk, one hand fazing through the stack of flimsi Jet keeps to one side.

Jet does her very best not to be startled, but she doesn't think she succeeds.

The blue man raises an eyebrow at her. It's bisected by a scar, not quite hidden by the curls of his hair. His clothes are strange. _“You can see me,”_ he says.

Jet nods hesitantly. She really, _really_ doesn't want to report herself to Medical-- she remembers the round of reconditioning she went through training her Cadets, though she hates to think of it-- still wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, horrors lurking in the shadows-- still struggles to remember things, but she _cannot_ fall behind, she _cannot go back_ \--

“ _Not a lot of people who can see me,”_ she hears through the first stirrings of panic, and she forces herself to focus on the voice.

“Not a lot of people who would admit to seeing you,” she answers in a murmur, so that the Officer who oversees their work does not overhear. The blue man laughs.

“ _Fair point, kid. Jet, was it?”_

“Yes. Maybe.” The blue man looks-- amused, maybe. Emotions are strange. Jet pauses. “Who is the other one?”

Now the blue man looks _confused_ , which is an emotion that she recognizes, given how often she feels it, her thoughts all scrambled. _“The other one? You mean Padm--?"_

There are footsteps in the hall. Jet turns and focuses on her work as best she can with a brain that doesn't seem to work quite right and hasn't since _then_ , and when she next looks up, the blue man has left.

These blue men don't seem to enjoy staying in one place for very long. Jet envies their freedom.

* * *

“Why are you sad?” she says when she sees the second blue man again, and she is alone with the second blue man, and there is no one who can overhear their conversation or mask the words she is trying to say.

The blue man looks at her as though he is coming out of a trance. His eyes are so tired.

“ _Do you see that planet?”_ the blue man responds. Jet nods, the movement exaggerated by her helmet. There is little else to see from the station but the planet and the void of stars in which it is suspended-- a brown dustball, irradiated, uninhabitable. The first Death Star, Starkiller's ancestor, stripped it of its resources before using it as a testing site. The First Order likes to tell of the Death Star's triumphs. Of the Empire's might. _“I used to live there.”_

“Did you die there?” Jet asks him.

“ _I died on Scarif,”_ answers the blue man. _“But everything I knew died here, and a part of me died with it all.”_

 _Scarif_ is not a name that Jet knows. She doesn't know of this planet's name, either-- hadn't considered that the Empire would have destroyed a planet as a weapon's test while there were still people on the surface. She certainly isn't _surprised_ ; she knows what the First Order does. Has lived it. And the First Order is the Empire reborn.

“So it makes you sad to look at it?” asks Jet, trying to understand. Emotions are difficult. Troopers aren't supposed to have them, to give words to the things they aren't supposed to feel.

“ _It makes me sad to know that I died for nothing,”_ the blue man tells her. The space station hurtles through space; the planet turns; a crater the size of continents comes into view across the curve where hazy atmosphere meets endless vacuum. _“That Jedha died for nothing. That we all--”_

He flickers once, disappears.

 _Jedha_ , Jet whispers to herself in the dark of her bunkroom. She likes how the word sounds on her tongue, how her lips form around it.

* * *

“ _Hey, Jet,”_ says the first blue man, after cursing up a storm in the hallway outside of where she works. It seems to relax the blue man, or at least make him less upset, and more tired in place of it.

“Could you call me Jedha instead?”

The blue man is quiet for a long time. Jedha looks at him to see him with an unreadable expression on his face, something almost vacant.

“The other man told me about the planet we're orbiting over. Said it was called Jedha. It's a dead world, I knew that, but I didn't know what it was called. And names are important, and I thought-- I'll remember it, now, because it's my name, too. Not just ghosts.”

“ _Did the other man give you his name?”_ asks the blue man, very softly.

“No,” answers Jedha, “but he said he died on Scarif.”

The blue man disappears. Jedha sees neither of them for a long time, after. Strange blue men. They never stay in one place for long.

* * *

Jedha is transferred from station to station-- three stations in as many standard months, because the Resistance is gaining traction against the First Order against all odds, and they are losing personnel by the thousands. She hears rumors of defectors, and there are gaps in the assigned positions which Jedha has joined, Troopers gone missing. The Officers are agitated, short-tempered. Troopers are assigned to jobs given to those who hold _rank_ and _name_ for lack of other options.

(Jedha does not like the First Order, but she wishes that the Resistance need not kill the Troopers like her to bring it down. They are victims too, she thinks.)

Jedha is transferred from station to station, and then she is told to leave her post. She is taking a departing shuttle to a Star Destroyer, where she will now be stationed. She knows she is  _supposed_ to know which one, but she can't remember.

She is a good Trooper, and she does not speak unless spoken to or ordered to speak-- but such rules apply only to the Officers. Face covered by a mask, sounds masked by the rumble of engines as their shuttle departs, she murmurs to the Trooper strapped in next to her.

“Where is this assignment?”

The Trooper next to her actually turns their head, as if they are staring at her. The vocoder removes inflection from their voices, but something tells her that the other is stunned.

“The _Finalizer_.”

* * *

The blue people come with her.


	21. Chapter 21

Jedha meets more of the blue people on the _Finalizer_. Seven of them, though she knows there are more. The first blue man, with the robes and the scar, talks about his wife.

She has to look up what a _wife_ is, and then from there a _husband_ , and then _marriage_ , and then she has to think about it for a bit. She hadn't known that there were emotions attached to sex, just that sometimes an Officer needed to satisfy their lust. That's why so many non-Humans are in the Trooper ranks. But, anyway.

There's the first blue man, with the robes and the scar; the second blue man, with the goggles, always so _sad_. But they had both come with her. Then she meets a pair of older men, bickering fondly in the hallway outside where her squad is bunking. One is shorter, head shaved, a staff in his hands; the other taller, heavily armored, one large rifle slung over his shoulder-- do the ghosts have need to fight, too? What is there even for the dead to battle with? The shorter of the pair stops mid-sentence to say without even looking at her:

“ _Is this the one?”_

And the other one rolls his eyes and says, _“They all look the same in that armor.”_

“ _Ah, but they are listening to us!”_

Jedha rushes into the bunkroom. She isn't sure how many of the blue men there are, but she knows she _can't_ be seen listening to them. She can't go back to reconditioning. She _can't_.

(She sees them more and more often, the blue people. The _ghosts_. The man with the goggles had died on Scarif, and everything he had known died with the Death Star's destruction of Jedha. All of them are _dead_.)

(She sees them and wonders if the Cadets who didn't make it through primaries are in the same place. If the Troopers who have fallen because they can do nothing else still walk the floors of the spaceships they served on.)

* * *

The two men are named Baze and Chirrut. Following them are one more pair, a tired kind of man and a woman quick and quiet as a shadow, and the only reason Jedha remembers her face better than she remembers most faces is because of the fire in her eyes. Cassian, and Jyn. Jedha would be more convinced that she's hallucinating all of them, except whenever they appear, the technology around them starts to malfunction. Too many times for it to be a coincidence.

“Is it bad that I can see them?” she asks the first blue man, whose name she still does not know-- and she's _fairly_ sure that it's because he never actually told her, not because she forgot what it was.

“ _Why would it be bad?”_ asks the blue man.

“Because they're always so sad.”

“ _They get to see that they died for nothing.”_ The blue man, too, looks sad. But just for a moment, the expression so fleeting that Jedha thinks she might have imagined it. It's not an unlikely possibility. _“And that's a terrible thing to see. But that you can see them? No, that's not bad at all.”_

* * *

Nine more months, she serves on the _Finalizer._ One year since Em-Kay and her Cadets ran, and one year since Jedha has seen them or Ella or LJ. But she sees the blue people often, the _ghosts_ , and they help to keep some of the fuzzy static in her mind at bay. Better than she could likely do alone.

There are no ghosts of Troopers that she has ever seen. Baze and Chirrut, though Jedha forgets their names with somewhat regular consistency, tell her that this means Troopers were likely at peace with their deaths. Cassian sighs a breathless sigh, and Jyn looks down at her hands, pale and blue. _“Why are we here, then?”_ she asks, and Chirrut hums and doesn't answer.

They tell her stories, all of them, when they're around. Of the planet Jedha, and of a galaxy before Empires and Orders, and of Force-users living in freedom and peace.

“What's the Force?” asks Jedha, and they tell her of that, too.

Nine more months, she serves on the _Finalizer_. She works in communications, as she has since her first assignment, and passes messages across the flagship, and transmissions coming in, and transmissions going out. So she hears of the rebellions that the Officers keep secret from the Trooper divisions – defectors, entire platoons and squadrons and portions of _bases_ rising up in arms. She knows about all of them.

She dares to copy them down onto flimsi. She whispers to her bunkmates, contraband hidden underneath her pillow – _did you hear, did you hear._

Except, then. _Then_.

She does remember, with surprising clarity, one of the training exercises her Cadet grouping was put through when they were in secondaries. It was towards the end, when they were working on transitions into the final stage of training, and most of what they did was practical instead of working through simulations. Twenty of them were dropped into a forest on an unknown planet and told to make it to the rendezvous point, given maps and the bare minimum of supplies. It was a hot, dry kind of place, and in the middle of summer, it must have been; the grass had cracked underneath her boots, wilted and yellow. A fire had started, somewhere, and it turned into a blaze that nothing could hope to stop, eating up the dried grasses and wood with an insatiable hunger, and they'd needed to run. There had been so much smoke.

Jedha can't recall how many of her grouping died on that mission, though she knows some of them did. What she remembers most is the smell in the air, and how she had swum to rocky outcroppings towards the middle of a river and clung to them as the air grew hotter, and hotter, and hotter. How _quickly_ the fire burned, once it caught on.

Nine more months, she serves on the _Finalizer_ , and it only takes nine months for the Troopers stationed there to follow the rest-- nine months for rebellion to take hold. She can feel the ghosts watching over her as she starts to read the inter-ship transmissions during her shift-- _request troops, belligerent agents, Deck 17A-- request troops, belligerent agents, Deck 29D-- request troops, belligerent agents--_

“ _Rebellions are built on hope,”_ says Jyn, and:

“ _Make ten men feel like a hundred,”_ Cassian tells her. _“You outnumber them,”_ and:

“ _We are one with the Force--”_

“ _\--and the Force is with us,”_ and:

“ _You're the spark, Jedha,”_ Bodhi murmurs, _“you brought the message,”_ and:

“ _It's now or never, kid.”_ The ghost whose name she still does not know seems to sound from everywhere, and it fills her with a resolve she's never known before.

_\--request troops, belligerent agents, Decks 12, 13, 15----_

She flicks off the comms. Pushes back her chair, and turns, and stands. Unclasps her blaster from her belt.

There are two Officers who oversee this sector of communications. They are talking to one another, unaware, and she hesitates for just a moment. Only a moment.

Other Troopers rush out at the noise, and they stare at her, and she stares back at them with a frightened kind of defiance-- but there's no need.

“Request troops,” mocks the Trooper who works next to Jedha, looking at the Officers, “belligerent agents, Deck 18B, communications sector.”

Behind her helmet, Jedha grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyyyy, guess what.
> 
> Only one more chapter left.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One year later, and here we are.
> 
> I've borrowed teeny tiny things out of TLJ here, like the location of the Resistance base, but aside from that we've well and truly diverged from canon at this point (if that wasn't obvious before.........). There are also other things bearing resemblance to stuff that happened in TLJ that have actually been planned out for a while, now. None of it is really spoiler-y in any way.
> 
> That being said. Uh. Don't kill me for the ending?

_Resistance Base, Crait  
_ _Two Years After the Destruction of Starkiller Base_

The Resistance base on Crait is _freezing_ , all the salt covered in thin layers of frost, and Rey can't seem to really get warm no matter how many layers she wears. She takes comfort in the fact that her father, despite never once having set foot on Tatooine in the past twenty years, is equally uncomfortable, and that she isn't alone in this cold, cold misery. Her mother laughs at them both and makes them hot chocolate. They sit together and talk and if Rey pretends, it feels like they've always been a family. That they never left.

The days are bad enough, with the cold, but the nights are worse. Rey does everything she can to avoid needing to get out of bed until the sunrise, squished between Poe and Finn in a too-small bunk underneath the collective number blankets that the three of them own-- and when her comm starts to chirp from the other side of the room, waking her from a dead sleep, she briefly considers the merits of crying.

 _Don't waste your water_ , says an old, tired part of her, followed by the more practical thought that a comm this late is probably something important.

“Should get that,” Poe mumbles, only the top of his head, tufts of curly dark hair, visible from the cocoon of blankets.

“Means _you_ need to get out first.” She's in the middle. Poe has the side of the bed open to the room, while Finn has the wall.

There's a pause.

“Oh. No. Don't get it.”

But she _does_ need to. A comm this late is unusual, and therefore important, and she knows this. It's just _cold_.

Rey fumbles for it with the Force, trying to wake up enough to focus; it drops after an unsteady journey through the air atop the blankets, still flashing, and she prods at the button to respond to the call. “Commaaaaander,” she starts around a yawn so wide she hears her jaw crack, “Dameron-Skywalker... speaking.”

“ _Sorry to wake you, Commander,”_ comes the voice on the other end, sounding legitimately apologetic, but it's overwhelmed by tense urgency. She immediately feels more alert. _“But it's all hands on deck. Report to the hangar bay.”_

“Yessir.”

“ _The other two of you are also required to report, ma'am. Signing out.”_

“Acknowledged.” Any other time, she would be amused at the turn of phrase. But, it's very cold. And something is wrong. She can feel it in the Force, now, a strange kind of humming tension.

“...Do we need to,” Poe murmurs, still mostly asleep-- Rey knows he loves the Resistance over nearly everything else, and he never, ever shirks duty, so she doesn't begrudge him the reluctant phrase.

Instead, she kicks him out of the bed and rolls over to face Finn, whose eyes are still closed, but he's grinning. “Come on, then, other one of me. Something's up.”

“I hate you,” Poe says from the floor as the other two climb out from underneath the blankets, sitting up himself. “I-- no. No, I feel bad saying that even as a joke. Love you. Please don't push me out of bed, it's very cold down here.”

“Love you, too,” says Rey, reaching for her clothes, “and I won't. Promise.”

* * *

They get to the hangar bays in quick time – even their reluctance to leave their shared bed doesn't slow them down, and they've worked out a system of being ready to leave at a moment's notice. There's always a looming threat, in the Resistance. That being said, they crash into each other with their eyes half-shut against the lights turned on, waiting to adjust to the brightness, and by the time they make it out of their room to sprint down the halls with tense urgency, Poe is wearing Finn's pants underneath his orange flight suit-- Finn, Rey's socks and one of Poe's shirts-- Rey, a shirt that could belong to either Finn or Poe at this point, with all they wind up sharing clothes, and the battered leather jacket that used to belong to Poe and now belongs to all of them anyway.

It's packed. Mostly armed personnel, blasters at the ready, but the hangar bay doors, oddly enough, are still open. Leia is a pillar of calm in all the movement and motion, her arms crossed, standing in the center of the floor – Luke to her left. The space where Han would be at her right is empty, but the _Falcon_ is in this hangar bay, and so she can take a guess as to where he is instead. Rey turns her head for a kiss on the cheek from Poe before he splits off, sprinting to where the fighter pilots are gathering, and catches a glimpse of her mother standing with her hands on Em-Kay's shoulders. The former Trooper looks anxious. Her kids are nowhere to be seen.

Finn and Rey hurry up to join the two at the center – her aunt, her father. She reaches into the Force for the comfort of her grandparents and finds nothing but that ever-present tension, still lingering, draping itself over everything like a shroud.

“We received a transmission approximately half an hour ago,” Leia says in a strange tone of voice, staring out towards the starlit sky-- empty, now. The Force hums tense and taught. The sky won't be staying empty. “A fleet of ships, perhaps forty minutes out, the coordinates of our base sliced from First Order databanks.”

Rey feels a cold chill down her spine entirely unrelated to the temperature of the air. “Why? As a warning?”

“If the Order knows where we are, _why aren't they here_?” Finn asks at almost the same time, sounding far more urgent. He knows how the First Order works.

“Most of the ships are transport shuttles,” Leia continues, still staring out at the sky. She answers neither of them. Rey looks to her father, but he only shakes his head. _Wait._ “Some battleships. The Order was en route to here, presumably, if they have our location, but the fleet is being chased by them as well. They estimate an hour, maybe two, between them-- and they've committed to the defense of our base and all evacuees, so long as we take the transports with us.”

“How many of them?”

“Five thousand and change.”

Rey swears. Finn goes still, and she can feel his incomprehension like a shockwave for just a moment-- “They sliced into First Order databases? _Troopers_?”

“Yes,” Leia nods, and holds out one hand. Mara is walking over with Em-Kay, still one hand on the girl's shoulder. “Finn, I need you to stick with Em-Kay, here. The two of you are our translators and the proof that they'll be trusted, accepted. One of their shuttles is landing while the rest remain in orbit.”

He nods once, sharply. Turns his gaze to the sky, too, though there are no ships yet present.

“Rey, you're here, with us. Luke and I.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Rey nods. She takes a slow breath in, lets it out. The fighter pilots are prepping for launch, their miniscule fleet ready to stand against the might of the First Order--

\--it won't work. She knows with a start that it _won't work_. Some of the evacuees from the base will make it out, but not all.

Her grandfather has told her of Hoth. She's often thought, when it's especially cold, that Crait reminds her those stories.

She wishes Poe had given her more than a kiss on the cheek, had done more than pull Finn into a tight hug. She reaches over to take Finn's hand and holds to it for dear life.

* * *

High above the Resistance base, hundreds and hundreds of transport shuttles fall into position with the handful of fighters that the pilots who defected along with them are capable of flying. Ella puts a gloves hand up against the cool, clear duraplex and rests her helmet against the curve, staring out – she can't see the Resistance base, just other ships floating against the backdrop of space as if suspended on strings, their transports all so high in orbit, turned away from the planet to leave on signal.

“Does this make us traitors, now?” one of her Cadets pipes up, voice pitched high, young. RB-1190. Ella is--  _was_ \-- in charge of overseeing a portion of the RB units, serials 1182-1194. He has a blaster in his lap; all of the Cadets who could get them before they evacuated the base do.

“We were traitors since we diverted from the given training programs,” says the other Trooper on board, HA-6624. He's older than Ella by several standard years, but only recently assigned to overseeing Cadets in primaries; most of his dry tone is filtered out by the vocoder, but she can pick up on enough of it. “Like FN-2187 before us.”

“Are you  _sure_ he's real?” one of his own Cadets asks. Though none of them are Cadets anymore, really. Ella is a Trooper, but not, and though she is no longer a Cadet she  _was_ one for so long that she still thinks of herself as such, sometimes. And none of the Cadets they all oversaw through primaries are  _in_ primaries anymore, or Cadets. None of them are a part of the First Order. “FN-2187?”

 _Traitors_.

“Supposed to be,” says HA-6624, and gestures to the duraplex Ella still rests her head against. “Probably in one of those ships out there.”

She is quickly joined by a handful of Cadets brave enough to break out of file and look out the viewport with her. Still, she doesn't much care to guess which ship Finn who was FN-2187 might be stationed on. She keeps thinking about Em-Kay and her own Cadets, who may or may not be out there, on a Resistance ship-- it's been a little over one standard year, now, since they ran. Ella has trained a set of Cadets and sent them off to secondaries without choice, and she knows nothing of what has become of them, can only hope that they might carry those lessons she taught them all in secret.

_You are people. You are **people.**_

LJ is out there, too. Somewhere. She hopes. She no longer knows anything of PF-3001, or Jay, or even Em-Kay, but LJ was on base. LJ was looking after her Cadets.

There were still ships on the ground when the First Order started the bombardment of one of its own training facilities.

She hopes.

“Who is going to speak with the Resistance leaders?” she asks, staring out, watching the path of a single shuttle as it breaks away to make landfall. “Who even  _leads_ this fleet?”

“Troopers have seniority by serial numbers,” says HA-6642. “I think that'd be some of the DX Corps, since they're the oldest ones on base.”

“Okay.” She rests her hand against the blaster at her hip, though it will do her no good at all if the First Order catches up to them before they leave. Then, it's just a matter of ships being blown out of the sky. Transports are blown from the sky. Star Destroyers simply  _are_. “Okay. And now we wait?”

“Now, we wait.”

* * *

In the end, it plays out like she expects.

The Troopers on the run fall into orbit with the remainder of the launching fleet-- the Cadets, rather, the _children_ , most of them so very very small and many more of them not much larger but willing to fight all the same. Ground defenses are assembled, the antiaircraft guns, the blast cannons, the foot soldiers-- the pilots up in the air, few dozen of them that they have on base, are in formation to guard the evacuees. The single shuttle of Troopers that lands instead of taking off speaks with Leia, _General of the Resistance, Huttslayer, Queen of Alderaan_ , and Luke, _Grandmaster, Jedi, Sky-walker_ , and Finn ( _who was FN-2187 who was a Trooper just like us_ ) and Em-Kay, brave, brave Cadet, and are far more trusting of them when they are done. Frequencies are distributed, and a few brief coded signals.

The first Star Destroyer appears in the sky when only a third of their ships have made the jump to hyperspace. Half a dozen more follow it in a heartbeat, faint triangles far far above the clouds and the salt flats, but Rey can see them all the same.

“How many more?” Leia asks, and Luke looks around, and Em-Kay grips Finn's hand so tightly Rey fears it might break-- and Finn holds to Rey just as tight. It's Mara who answers.

“It's only essential personnel left. The rest are in the air."

“I ordered my Cadets to go. My kids. To board a shuttle.” Em-Kay speaks in just a whisper, hardly loud enough to be heard over the klaxons and the engines and the sound of Rey's heartbeat pounding in her ears. The girl's cheeks are wet. “I don't think they did. Said they wouldn't go without me, and they're very good at hiding. My kids.”

Another transport takes off. Not moments later, something explodes in a hail of fire and shrapnel, and more alarms join the rest, and someone shouts-- “TIE fighters incoming--!”

“Two dozen making their approach--”

“--General----”

"I don't suppose you're going to get on a ship without me?" 

Leia looks at Luke. Luke looks at Leia. For a moment, they are mirror images of one another, and Rey can see the weight of all the years hanging around them like a shroud. Then her father smiles, crooked.

"You'd have to knock me out, first, and we don't have time for that kind of fighting."

There have been distress signals sent since they first got word of the impending attack. Not a one has been answered. Em-Kay bolts when she hears the patter of children's feet, and while the engines of the transports are running hot, the weapons fire in the air is too thick to fly through, no clear path. The base seems to shake with the force of it all.

"Well, then." She takes his hand, squeezes it.

This could very likely be their final stand. Their last hope.

Their only hope.

"May the Force be with us."

He squeezes back. "Always."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _i, rebel_ will be continued, in a sense, with _rage against the dying of the light_
> 
> Jan. 15, 2018
> 
> (hides)


End file.
